Rehab scheme that enabled terrorist killings is scrapped

CAMBRIDGE University has scrapped its prison rehabilitation programme after a convicted terrorist went on a bloody rampage in London.

Freed terrorist Usman Khan, 8, convinced staff at the Learning Together programme he was a reformed character before killing two graduates.

Khan, wearing a fake suicide vest with kitchen knives strapped to his hands, stabbed rehab worker Jack Merritt, 5, and volunteer Saskia Jones, 3, at an event at Fishmonger’s Hall to mark the scheme’s fifth anniversary. He then ran on to London Bridge where he was shot dead by police on November 9, 019.

Khan had been released on licence from prison 11 months earlier after serving half of a 16-year sentence for being part of a terror cell plotting to blow up the London Stock Exchange.

An inquest highlighted how staff saw him as a ‘poster boy’ for the rehab programme after he took part in courses while serving his sentence at high-security Whitemoor prison. He had even featured in a promotional video.

The inquest jury concluded that this had played a part in the ‘collective failure’ to stop him attending the event, or to search his bag, which contained the knives he used in the attack.

Following criticism from the coroner, Cambridge University responded yesterday: ‘There now needs to be a “clear stop” to the delivery of the Learning Together programme. The programme is therefore at an end.’ It said any future contact between students and offenders would be closely supervised by the university’s Institute of Criminology.

Learning Together said the scheme would be ‘dissolved’ and its co-directors Drs Amy Ludlow and Ruth Armstrong had reiterated their ‘profound grief’ and ‘deep and ongoing trauma’.