A freed terrorist strikes again
Undercover police shoot Islamist dead in London high street after daylight attack Assailant had been released early from jail for terror-related offences just days ago Johnson pledges immediate overhaul of terror laws after second incident in months
By Hayley Dixon, Robert Mendick
and Charles Hymas
A TERRORIST wearing a fake suicide vest stabbed two people on a busy London high street yesterday, just days after his release from prison, and while under surveillance by counter-terrorism officers who shot him dead.
Sudesh Amman, 20, had been automatically released from jail halfway through a sentence of three years and four months for possessing a bombmaking manual.
Government sources last night admitted that there had been concerns about his behaviour, but they had been powerless to keep him behind bars.
Ministers are braced to face immediate demands for all terrorists who have been released early to be recalled, amid growing fears over public safety following two attacks by terrorists on parole within just over two months.
Up to 180 convicted Islamist terrorists have been released early from jail in the past two decades, analysis shows, and The Daily Telegraph warned that Amman was due for release in the wake of the London Bridge attack.
Boris Johnson will today make an urgent statement to announce plans for “fundamental changes to the system for dealing with those convicted of terrorism offences”.
Amman was shot dead by plainclothes officers, who had been following him on Streatham High Road, within eight seconds of stabbing a woman in the back. His second victim, in his 40s, was last night recovering in hospital. It is understood Amman was wearing an electronic monitoring tag.
In the wake of November’s London Bridge attack, the Government promised tougher monitoring for serious terrorists, including in probation hostels, to allow authorities to keep closer tabs on them following their release.
However, the attack will raise questions about how a terrorist apparently under 24-hour surveillance was able to attack innocent people in the middle of the day on a busy high street.
It is the third attack in just over two months by jailed jihadists. Earlier this month at HMP Whitemoor, where the London Bridge attacker served his sentence, two inmates attacked prison staff with makeshift weapons in what police described as the UK’S first terror attack behind bars.
In a statement, the Prime Minister said: “An investigation is taking place at pace to establish the full facts of what happened, and the Government will provide all necessary support to the police and security services as this work goes on.” He added: “Following the awful events at Fishmongers’ Hall, we have moved quickly to introduce a package of measures to strengthen every element of our response to terrorism – including longer prison sentences and more money for the police.
“Tomorrow, we will announce further plans for fundamental changes to the system for dealing with those convicted of terrorism offences.”
Whitehall sources confirmed that
Amman had been released from prison towards the end of January under very strict licence terms.
A source said: “He was also under surveillance, and that is what allowed the police to do their job so quickly.”
The source added: “There were concerns about this individual when he was in prison – around his language – but there were no powers available to any of the authorities to keep him behind bars.”
The knife-obsessed college student, who once wrote in a notebook that his dream was to die as a martyr, was jailed in December 2018 after sharing an alqaeda magazine in a family Whatsapp group. He had reached the automatic halfway release point, including time
THE man browsing the shelves in the discount store on Streatham High Road seemed to be taking his time. Wearing a zipped up camouflage jacket and grey jogging bottoms, he didn’t say a word to the member of staff serving behind the counter in the Low Price Store. He had been in the shop the week before and bought nothing.
This time, in a flash and without warning, the man – witnesses would later describe him as Middle-eastern in appearance – grabbed a knife, costing just £3.99 with a marble-effect plastic handle and a 10in steel blade, that was hanging from a stand near to the till and made a run for it. It was just about 2pm on a busy Sunday afternoon.
“He was very quiet when he was in the shop, I thought he was just window shopping,” the member of staff told The Daily Telegraph.
“I didn’t know that he had something in his mind to take something.” The serving assistant thought he was dealing with a south London shoplifter, not a terrorist. He ran from behind the counter to give chase.
The shoplifter, it would later turn out, was a previously convicted terrorist only recently released from jail. He would later be named as Sudesh Amman, jailed aged just 18 in 2018 for 13 separate terrorism offences, including possession of bomb-making manuals.
“Within 10 metres of leaving the shop he had got the knife out of the cover,” said the shop worker, who then watched the horror unfold. “Right in front of my eyes he stabbed the lady,” he said.
The woman would never have seen her attacker coming. She was standing on the pavement, outside the local pub facing the opposite way. “The lady was just walking along the street. He stabbed her in the back,” said the witness. “She didn’t seem to know she had been stabbed in the back until she started bleeding and then she sat on the floor and people began helping her.”
The terrorist ran on. Within seconds he had stabbed a male passer-by outside the White Lion pub. The victim, the most seriously injured of the two people stabbed, fell to the ground. Witnesses rushed to help him, trying to stop the blood pouring from the wound – trying to prevent him “bleeding out”.
Dave Chawner, a writer, who attended to the male victim, said:
“There were three members of the public that were using a blanket to suppress the wound. One person seemed to have medical knowledge and sent me to the crossroads in order to flag down an ambulance.”
Nardos Mulugeta, a 52-year-old mechanical engineer, said: “He had a big open wound on the right side of his stomach. It was scary. He was getting pale and losing a lot of blood. Before police arrived people were using their clothes to put pressure on the wound and others were talking to him to keep him awake.”
Up ahead, Amman, still brandishing the stolen knife, had kept running. Until, that is, he reached the Boots pharmacy.
Behind him were two, possibly three, men dressed in jeans and hoodies, yelling at him to stop. They were armed, plain-clothes counter-terrorism officers who had been keeping the terrorist under watch. Another armed police officer, on a high speed motorcycle, raced ahead and dismounted. He also pulled out his handgun.
Amman, it now transpires, had only recently been let out of jail and had been living in a bail hostel just under a mile away from Streatham High Road.
Justice Denedo, 44, who works in the City, witnessed what happened next, capturing the dramatic events on his mobile phone. “I thought it must be gangs but then I could see this guy running towards me and I could see two men wearing balaclavas chasing behind him,” said Mr Denedo.
“All of a sudden I could hear this guy screaming. I think it was the police officer. The guy they were chasing was saying somepoint thing but it wasn’t very audible. He was screaming and the police officers were screaming at the same time.
“Then I heard two shots very close together. ‘Pop pop’, just like that. The guy stopped and then he turned around and I noticed he had a massive silver knife in his hands. It was a very big blade. Easily 10 inches.”
The shots stopped the terrorist in his tracks. According to sources, it had taken eight seconds from the first victim being stabbed to the terrorist being shot.
That did not finish it though. Mr Denedo watched as “another shot was fired, and that is when he fell to the ground”.
The officers surrounded the man as he lay prone on the ground. At that it became clear that he was wearing a suicide vest – it would later be proved to be a hoax – with canisters sticking out from his jacket.
Mr Denedo watched as Amman, lying on the ground, bleeding from the gunshot wounds, tried to reach for a canister as if to detonate it.
“He was trying to move his hands,” said Mr Denedo, “The police were screaming at him and yelling at people to step back. They kept yelling ‘step back’. Then there were two more shots fired.
Mr Denedo added: “The attacker was struggling and struggling and he couldn’t move his hand close enough to the canister and then all of a sudden he stopped moving.
“The whole thing happened so fast. I think one of the police on the motorbike shot him.”
Amman lay on the ground dead. Police yelled for the public to stay back.
They couldn’t be sure the suicide vest was fake. Shops, pubs and cafés were evacuated. Streatham High Road went into shutdown. Terrorism had struck London once more.
‘I heard two shots very close together. ‘Pop pop’, just like that. The guy stopped … he had a massive silver knife’