A poem and thanks for the people he plotted to murder
London Bridge jihadist was hailed as success story by rehabilitation project he would go on to target
Hayley Dixon, Victoria Ward
Greg Wilford
THE London Bridge attacker was heralded as a success story of the rehabilitation initiative that he went on to attack, it emerged last night.
Learning Together, a Cambridge University programme that worked with Usman Khan in prison and after his release, used him as a case study to show how they helped prisoners.
Khan even wrote a poem and a thank-you note to organisers after they provided him with a computer he could use without breaching a licence that banned him from going online.
Just months later the 28-year-old used his connection to the rehabilitation initiative to get permission to travel to London and kill two of those people who were trying to help him.
It is understood that Jack Merritt, one of those murdered in Khan’s rampage, worked with him while he was behind bars. Mr Merritt, a law graduate, coordinated eight Learning Together courses at HMP’S Grendon, Warren Hill and Whitemoor, where he is believed to have met Khan.
His role was later expanded to coordinate eight courses across three sites: HMP’S Grendon, Warren Hill and
Whitemoor – the high security prison in Cambridgeshire where Khan was serving his sentence.
In 2012, Khan, a friend of Anjem Choudhary, the hate preacher, became the youngest of a nine-strong jihadist gang jailed for planning to bomb the London Stock Exchange and targeting VIPS including Boris Johnson.
He was originally jailed indefinitely to protect the public, but this was reduced on appeal to a 16-year sentence of which he served half and was then automatically released.
It is unclear at what point during his sentence he moved from HMP Belmarsh to Whitemoor, but it is there that he became involved with academics from Cambridge, who began working at the prison in 2016.
The Learning Together website was apparently deleted on the night of the attack, but a cached version of its reports show HMP Whitemoor and Khan were considered a success story.
In a case study of Khan it was said that he had been “involved with Learning Together a great deal” since his release and gave a speech via a video link at the Institute of Continuing Education in Cambridge and attended a discussion at his former prison.
The rehabilitation programme provided him with a computer both whilst he was behind bars and after his release “so that he can continue his studies and writing”.
The case study shows how Learning Together provided 15 Whitemoor inmates with references in the last year which were used for higher education applications and parole board hearings.
In one year, 18 “students” in the prison had their security category downgraded and reviewed, it notes.
The case study said that Khan – referred to only by his first name Usman – was due to begin a course at the Institute of Continuing Education in the coming months.
A spokesman for Cambridge said Khan had applied for a one-day course at the university but his application had never been processed as he had not paid the fees. They added that he only attended one course while he was a prisoner, consisting of four sessions.
Khan was released from prison in December last year on a strict set of conditions including that he wear an electronic tag, not enter London and not use the internet. But so that he could continue his writings, Learning Together members ran a sponsored 10k so he could have a computer to use at his Staffordshire bail hostel.
Learning Together wrote it was “proud” to be able to fundraise to provide Khan with a “secure non-networked chromebook that he can use to study and develop his writing while complying with his licence terms”.
He sent a thank-you note saying the project had a “special place in my heart”. “Learning Together is about opening minds, unlocking doors, and giving voice to those who are shut down, hidden from the rest of us,” he wrote. “It helps to include those who are generally excluded.
“I cannot send enough thanks to the entire Learning Together team and all those who continue to support this wonderful community.”
It is not known whether he was plotting his attack while praising the work, but it was not the first time that Khan claimed to have been a changed man.
Seven years ago, writing from his cell, he begged for the chance to “prove” he no longer harboured extreme Islamist views or posed a threat to the public. He was considered a
‘Learning Together is about opening minds, unlocking doors, and giving voice to those who are ... hidden from the rest of us’
model prisoner. After his release he was given permission to travel to Friday’s event after attending an earlier event in the capital under supervision.
The Fishmongers Charitable Trust, which runs the Fishmongers’ Hall where Friday’s attack began, helped to build a study centre at Whitemoor in partnership with the university.
One of eight high security prisons across the country, Whitemoor houses some of the most dangerous offenders and has for many years been identified as having a problem with extremism.
Learning Together, in an impact report for the prison for 2018-19, said the partnership was “leading the way in innovation and best practice”.
It also emerged yesterday that Khan attended a radical mosque run by a hate preacher in Stoke-on-trent before he was convicted of terrorism offences in 2012. He was known to visit the Tunstall Mosque, which was shut down after Kamran Hussain, its imam, was jailed for six-and-a-half years in 2017 for encouraging support for Isil.
An undercover police officer recorded Hussain telling children that “martyrdom was the supreme success” in a series of sermons in 2016. The mosque was close to Khan’s home, from where he tried to raise funds to build a terrorist training camp on land his family owned in Kashmir in 2010.
A source said: “Usman was known around here [in 2010] but he was turned away from a lot of the mosques because they reject that violent ideology.”