MI5 ‘failed to pass on warnings that jihadi was planning attack’
MI5 had intelligence that London Bridge jihadi Usman Khan was planning to launch a knife rampage on his release from jail, a hearing was told yesterday.
But the security service failed to share that intelligence, a lawyer for the family of one of his victims alleged.
The convicted terrorist killed Cambridge University graduates Saskia Jones, 23, and Jack Merritt, 25, during a prisoner rehabilitation event at Fishmongers’ Hall before being tackled by members of the public and shot dead by police.
Khan, 28, who was armed with two knives and wore a fake suicide vest, launched the attack on November 29, 2019 while he was still on licence after being freed from jail months earlier.
Nick Armstrong, for Mr Merritt’s family, argued at a preinquest hearing that the MI5 officers who made the decision not to pass on the information, should appear as witnesses.
The inquest, which is due to start in April, is currently planning only to call a ‘corporate witness’ for the intelligence service, known as Witness A.
Speaking by video-link at the Old Bailey, Mr Armstrong said: ‘MI5 had intelligence shortly before release that he was planning a post-release attack. That is a matter of obviously very great significance.’ He said MI5 had upgraded Khan’s priority rating, but failed to share what it knew. ‘This is about the level of risk Mr Khan represented, what was unknown about the risk and the decisions that were taken, to allow him to go to the Fishmongers’ Hall,’ he said.
‘The fact that he was in a high risk, category A, shortly before his release is significant. He spent much of his detention in special units and then went straight out into the community without proper scrutiny. It would not have taken much in the way of information-sharing or concern to have changed the [prison release] outcome. That is why it is critical to check what MI5 had but did not share.’
Reports show there were concerns that Khan continued to hold extremist views after he was jailed in 2016 for his part in an Al Qaeda-inspired bomb plot in 2012. In prison he acted as a ‘recruiter’, radicalising prisoners and encouraging violence.
Jonathan Hough QC, for the coroner, said: ‘MI5 had intelligence shortly before his release that he might return to terrorist offending.’
But he said that intelligence was ‘not peculiar to MI5 and also appeared in the records of others’ such as the police who could give evidence to the inquest.
Coroner Mark Lucraft QC will examine if the tragedy could have been prevented. Yesterday he set another pre-inquest hearing for March 25 when there is likely to be an application for MI5 papers on the case to be kept secret in the interests of national security.