London Bridge attacker sought ‘terror experience’ in Kashmir
LONDON: Usman Khan, the London Bridge attacker who killed two people on Friday and was shot dead, had planned to set up a madrasa and a terror training camp in Pakistan, and wanted to have “first-hand terrorist experience” in Jammu and Kashmir before returning to the UK.
Details of Khan’s plans and those of his accomplices were set out in a 2012 judgment at London’s Woolwich Crown Court, which had jailed him for eight years. Khan, who spent his late teen years in Pakistan, was released in 2018, wearing an electronic tag.
Targets discussed by Khan and his accomplices included British PM Boris Johnson, who was the mayor of London at that time, the London Stock Exchange, and the parliament complex in Westminster where they wanted to carry out a 26/11-style terror attack.
Judge Alan Wilkie said, “The discussions of Khan about the madrasa and his attitudes towards it and terrorism are highly eloquent of the seriousness of their purpose.
“This was a serious, long-term venture in terrorism, the purpose of which was to establish and manage a terrorist training facility at the madrasa, to fund-raise for its construction and operation by the use of various means, including fraud, and to recruit young British Muslims to go there and train. Usman Khan and Nazam Hussain were to obtain that training and were to obtain first-hand terrorist experience in
Kashmir.” Their plots were busted after MI5 tracked down Khan and his accomplices before their arrest in 2010.
One of the two dead in Friday’s attack has been identified as Jack Merritt, a graduate of the University of Cambridge.
Earlier, Neil Basu, assistant commissioner for specialist operations at Scotland Yard, revealed the identity of the attacker as “28-year-old Usman Khan residing in the Staffordshire area”.