EVIL POSTER BOY
Brit killer was case study for reform
London Bridge attacker Usman Khan was once celebrated as a success story by officials with the prison-rehabilitation program he targeted, according to a report.
Khan, a 28-year-old convicted terrorist, had even been invited to speak at the group’s Friday conference, where he unleashed his attack, killing two people before being shot dead by cops, the UK’s Telegraph said.
The Cambridge Universitybacked program, Learning Together, had worked with Khan before he was released from prison early last year — then used him in a case study to show how it has helped prisoners, the outlet reported.
The organization’s site reportedly featured a poem and thankyou note from Khan, in which he praised the program for “opening minds” and “giving a voice to those who are shut down.”
“It is more than just an organization, helping to provide learning of individual academic subjects,” Khan wrote in the organization’s materials, according to The Telegraph.
“For me, its main benefit is bringing people together, through the means of learning. Learning Together is about opening minds, unlocking doors, and giving a voice to those who are shut down, hidden from the rest of us.”
But Khan turned on those who helped him Friday during the program’s five-year anniversary event — stabbing two people fatally near London Bridge before he was tackled by a group of hero bystanders and then shot dead by officers.
Meanwhile, authorities have arrested one of his jihadi associates, 34-year-old Nazam Hussain, amid fears of copycat attacks, the newspaper reported.
Hussain was previously jailed for conspiring with Khan and seven others in 2010 to blow up the London Stock Exchange and other targets.
Both men were considered by their sentencing judge to be the “most serious and effective terrorists” of the group, only to each later secure early release through a legal loophole, The Telegraph reported.
Hussain’s home in Stoke-on-Trent was raided Saturday, the day after Khan’s rampage, and he was sent back behind bars on suspicion of preparing terrorist acts, according to The Times of London.
No further details about his alleged offenses were released, but there’s no information linking Hussain to the London Bridge attack, The Times said.
He is one of 74 convicted terrorists who are being vetted after the attack, and sources told The Telegraph that “a number” are expected to be sent back to prison in the coming days.
Robert Buckland, the UK’s secretary of justice, announced that his department would be reviewing the cases of a wider group of a “few hundred people” who might not have committed terrorist offenses but hold extremist views.