UK reveals 74 terrorists released early from jail

Security review after Al Qaeda sympathiser stabbed and killed two people in London

Police officers patrol London Bridge, where knife attacker Usman Khan was killed on Friday. AP

The UK is reviewing the status of 74 terrorists freed early from prison after two people were stabbed to death in London by an Al Qaeda sympathiser who was released half-way through a 16-year jail term.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the 74 were being properly supervised to ensure there was no threat as security rose in the agenda before national elections on December 12.

Police revealed that as part of the review, a man, 34, was arrested on suspicion of preparing terrorist acts after a search of his home on Saturday. It was not connected to Friday's attack.

Mr Johnson criticised a previous Labour government for bringing in laws that allowed the automatic early release of the killer, Usman Khan, after serving eight years for plotting to bomb the London Stock Exchange and other targets in 2012.

Khan was one of the key players in the plot and was sentenced to a minimum eight-year term.

Changes to the law meant that he was released in December 2018 after eight years, taking into account days he had spent behind bars before he was convicted.

Khan was fitted with an electronic tag to monitor his movements and an “extensive” list of licence conditions, police said. He was believed to be complying with them.

But wearing a fake suicide vest and carrying knives, Khan killed two people and wounded several on Friday after launching an attack at an event celebrating the rehabilitation of prisoners.

He was shot dead by police after being stopped by members of the public.

Police on Sunday identified the two victims as Saskia Jones, 23, and Jack Merritt, 25, graduates of Cambridge University who worked with the rehabilitation programme.

Ms Jones's family said she had wanted to work with victims of crime and had applied to the police.

Jack Merritt's father said on Saturday that he did not want his son’s death to “be used as the pretext for more draconian sentences or for detaining people unnecessarily”.

Mr Johnson told the BBC: “I think it is repulsive that individuals as dangerous as this man should be allowed out after serving only eight years, and that's why we are going to change the law.

“The key issue is that he was allowed out early. Legally there was no way of stopping him from coming out early.”

He said he would make prison sentences after Friday’s terrorist attack but faced criticism from the opposition, who said funds to prisons and police were slashed as part of decade-long austerity drive by the Conservative government.

Ian Acheson, a former prison governor who was commissioned by the government to write a report on extremism in British jails, said he the system was a “shambles”.

Mr Acheson said Khan's case “will be an organisational catastrophe that no amount of bureaucratic evasion can fix”.

He wrote in The Sunday Times that his review found "serious deficiencies in almost every aspect of the management of terrorist offenders through the system that are relevant to Usman Khan".

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said he believed convicted terrorists should “not necessarily” serve their full terms, depending on the nature of their sentence and how they had behaved in prison.

“It depends on the circumstances, it depends on the sentence, but crucially it depends on what they've done in the prison,” Mr Corbyn told Sky News.

Mr Corbyn, who was criticised for saying he would have preferred ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi to have been taken alive, said police had no choice on Friday but to shoot Khan dead.

Police have so far found no evidence to suggest Khan was working with others.

Three people remain in hospital, two of them in a stable condition, after Friday's attack. A third person is suffering from less serious injuries.