Stafford terrorist wrote play foretelling elements of Fishmongers’ Hall attack
A play by Stafford terrorist Usman Khan which foretold elements of his Fishmongers’ Hall atrocity did not give security services cause for concern, a senior MI5 official has said.
The script, entitled Drive North, was written while 28-year-old Khan was serving eight years in prison for planning a terror training camp in his parents’ homeland of Pakistan, and was passed on to MI5 in early 2019.
Khan went on to kill Cambridge graduates Jack Merritt and Saskia Jones at an event by prisoner education programme Learning Together in central London on November 29, 2019, during which he strapped knives to his hands and wrapped a fake suicide belt around his waist.
The 28-year-old, of Wolverhampton Road, Stafford, who launched his attack with two knives and a fake suicide belt, was shot dead by police after being chased by delegates on to London Bridge.
The inquests into the deaths on Thursday heard that the plot featured two characters, later revealed to be the protagonist in conversation with himself.
That character had been treated in a secure unit before being released where he would go on to commit a series of murders armed with a knife.
The play concluded with an investigation into whether the deaths could have been prevented.
Giving evidence on Thursday, a senior MI5 official known only as Witness A described how the play was seen by her colleagues but was deemed simply a piece of creative writing.
The inquests were previously told Khan enrolled on Learning Together courses while in prison, including one on creative writing.
Witness A told the inquests: “At the time we received it in early 2019, they (the MI5 investigation team) saw it as very much part of the literature he had been producing.
“He (Khan) had been undertaking literature courses as part of his rehabilitation.
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“It didn’t give them cause for concern or add or detract from the united picture – that Khan may re-engage in terrorist activity.”
Earlier Witness A told the inquest the security service could not have prevented the Fishmongers’ Hall attack despite earlier intelligence that Khan wanted to “die and go to paradise”.
An inquest at the Guildhall into the deaths has heard that Khan was allowed to attend despite concern that he would return to his old ways upon his release from prison 11 months earlier.
Witness A said a review found the attack could not have been prevented.
She said the security service first became aware of Khan in 2008, as a member of terror group al-Muhajiroun (ALM).
He was linked to a plot to attack the London Stock Exchange and jailed for planning a terror camp abroad.
The officer, who gave evidence from behind a screen, said MI5 was aware that Khan had been involved in violence in prison.
Jonathan Hough QC, counsel for the coroner, asked: “Was there also evidence he wanted to die and go to paradise?”
Witness A replied: “There was information to that effect.”
Jurors were told that Khan had retained contact with his co-defendants and other terrorists outside prison.
But, in 2015, MI5 took the decision to close its investigation into him.
Asked whether, in hindsight, she feels that was the right decision, Witness A replied: “I do. We had carried out quite a significant period of investigation while he was in prison, we received a steady stream of intelligence while in prison, and we saw no activities of national security concern, therefore it was the right time to close the investigation.”
She added: “We cannot investigate people forever.”
The witness told the court that MI5’s review after the Fishmongers’ Hall attack concluded that it “could not have taken any actions or materially changed the outcomes of this case.
“The investigative and operational decisions taken by MI5 in this case were sound.”
Khan, who was originally from Stoke, was living at flats on Wolverhampton Road, Stafford, before the attack. He was released from prison on licence in December 2018, halfway through a 16-year prison sentence, after he was convicted of terror offences in February 2012.
The inquests into Ms Jones and Mr Merritt’s deaths continue.
