Fishmongers’ Hall attack inquests: Terrorist wrote play about released prisoner committing knife murders
Agents saw play ‘as part of rehabilitation’ before Usman Khan launched knife attack after his own release
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Your support makes all the difference.A terrorist wrote a play about a released prisoner who carried out a series of knife murders before carrying out his own attacks, but MI5 was “not concerned”.
Usman Khan, 28, murdered two victims in a rampage at Fishmongers’ Hall in London on 29 November 2019.
The attack came 11 months after he was released from prison, after serving a sentence for planning to set up a terrorist training camp in Pakistan.
Inquests into his victims’ deaths heard that he had been known to MI5 since 2008 as an Islamist extremist, and the Security Service started investigating him again in prison and then a third time shortly before his release in December 2018.
Thursday’s hearing was told that around that time, officers received intelligence that Khan was going to return to his “old ways” of terrorism once freed, and wanted to plan an attack himself.
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A senior officer, who can only be named as Witness A because of an anonymity ruling, said MI5 mounted an investigation and put Khan under surveillance on his release.
She told the inquests that between that point and his attack, agents received “no intelligence of national security concern” or suggesting that Khan was planning an attack.
Jonathan Hough QC, counsel to the inquests, said that in early 2019 Khan wrote a play called “Drive North”.
He said it was about a conversation on a car journey between two people, who were later revealed to be the same protagonist in conversation with himself.
“The character was somebody who had been in a secure institution being treated for a personality disorder and goes on to commit a series of murders,” Mr Hough said.
“The play ends with an investigation to establish if the attacks could have been prevented.”
The protagonist in Khan’s play used a knife for the murders, as Khan did in his own rampage. There have been several reviews, and now the inquests, examining whether his attack could have been prevented.
Witness A said MI5 agents read the play but “saw it very much as part of the literature he had been producing on courses as part of his rehabilitation”.
“It didn’t give them cause for concern,” she added.
Khan had done a creative writing course in prison with Cambridge University’s Learning Together programme, which saw inmates taught alongside students in jail.
He went on to do more courses and become a “peer mentor” for the scheme, despite prison intelligence at the time stating that he was involved in violence and radicalising prisoners.
Learning Together invited Khan to several events following his release as an alumnus, and he recorded a video played to the inquests expressing his gratitude to the course.
In August 2019, Khan was invited to attend an anniversary celebration for the programme at Fishmongers’ Hall on London Bridge.
The inquests heard that Khan’s probation officer approved the unescorted trip in the belief the security services did not object.
However, MI5 and counter-terror police did not discuss the event as a potential attack risk in a meeting days before, and had not considered any monitoring or protections that could be put in place.
Khan arrived at the event wearing a concealed fake suicide vest and carrying knives in a bag, which he taped to his hands in a break.
He murdered Learning Together course coordinator Jack Merritt, 25, and volunteer Saskia Jones, 23. The terrorist stabbed two other people linked to the scheme, and a man who fought him, before being chased onto London Bridge and shot dead by police.
Witness A said that both police and MI5 believe that Khan deliberately targeted the Learning Together team during the attack, after “bypassing” Fishmongers’ Hall staff.
She insisted that there was previously no intelligence of the plan, and that MI5 believed Khan had a constructive and long-standing relationship with the group.
An internal review carried out by MI5 found that it could not have taken different decisions or actions that would have prevented the attack.
The inquests, which are establishing the circumstances of the victims’ deaths and whether they could have been prevented, continue.
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