UK terrorist told mother ‘I love you’ before launching knife attack

Sudesh Amman was shot dead by police one minute after stealing a knife and stabbing two people in south London

Sudesh Amman spoke with his mother shortly before he grabbed a knife and stabbed strangers in February 2020. Metropolitan Police

The mother of a terrorist shot dead by police after stabbing two strangers on a London street told an inquest on Friday that she had no idea her son was planning to launch an attack.

Haleema Khan said she knew straight away that her son had been killed in the police operation, after recognising his jacket in pictures of its aftermath on a news website.

Sudesh Amman, 20, was shot within 62 seconds of grabbing a knife from a shop in Streatham, south London, and attacking two members of the public in February 2, 2020, the inquest in central London heard.

His victims recovered from their injuries.

Amman, who was wearing a fake suicide vest, was shot dead by armed covert surveillance officers.

He had used £20 given to him by his mother two days before the attack to buy the items needed to make the mock-up suicide vest, Sky News reported.

Amman was being closely watched by a police surveillance team because of his increasingly extremist behaviour and concerns that he would launch an attack within days of being released from prison.

He was freed part way through a 40-month jail term for downloading knife-fighting and bomb-making manuals and sharing other terrorist material.

While behind bars, he had expressed a desire to kill Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II and had wanted to be held in a top-security unit because he saw it as a status symbol within the jail.

Amman's mother told the inquest that his last words to her in a phone call before the attack were: “Bye bye, I love you Mummy”.

Speaking through an interpreter, Ms Khan told a jury that she was on the phone to her husband when an alert came through on the handset about the attack.

“I noticed the jacket and the shoes on the news that were given from me to him,” she told the inquest.

Ms Khan and her husband then tried to call their son.

Asked what explanation could be given for her son carrying out the attack, Ms Khan said: “I didn't think he was going to do these things, I had no idea.”

Amman, the oldest of six brothers, was considered as one of the most dangerous men investigated by police and intelligence officials.

They believed that it was only a matter of time before he would launch an attack and had intensified their surveillance operation.

Lawyers for the family criticised the police for failing to intervene earlier and called the operation a “miserable failure”.

But police said they were concerned that arresting him would alert him to the surveillance operation.

The inquest heard that Amman was being followed by nine officers when he carried out his attack, 10 days after his release from Belmarsh top security prison, in south-east London.

There he rubbed shoulders with prominent terrorists, including Hashem Abedi, who is now serving life in prison for helping his suicide bomber brother Salman Abedi attack the Manchester Arena concert venue in 2017, killing 22 people.

The inquest is set to continue next week with further evidence from police, witnesses and the two people who were injured in the attack.