The family of a terrorist who was shot and killed as he carried out a random stabbing attack have questioned why he was not arrested earlier.
A lawyer for the family of Sudesh Amman called the police operation a “miserable failure” . He said that police made the “wrong call” by not intervening before Amman stole a knife and injured two members of the public in Streatham, south London. He had been released from prison ten days earlier.
Rajiv Menon QC told Amman’s inquest at the Royal Courts of Justice that he could have been arrested if police, who had mounted an extensive surveillance operation, had searched his room in a probation hostel and found his fake suicide vest.
The senior police officer said that there was not enough evidence to arrest Amman before he carried out the attack and that searching his room would have blown their cover. He added that the incident could have been “far, far worse” if it were not for the bravery and professionalism of his colleagues who stopped Amman.
The jury has previously been told how Amman was considered one of the most dangerous individuals that police and MI5 teams had investigated. The Metropolitan Police, which tried in vain to stop his automatic release from prison in February 2019, believed it was a question of “when, not if” he would carry out an attack.
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Amman, 20, who was released halfway through a 40-month terror sentence, had spoken in prison of wanting to carry out jihad. He had been mixing in HMP Belmarsh, in southeast London, with terrorists including the Parsons Green bomber and the Manchester Arena bomb plotter.
He launched his attack at 1.58pm, less than half an hour after he last spoke to his mother, Haleema Khan, the inquest heard. Days before the attack he used £20 she gave him to buy items he used in his fake suciide vest.
Today’s hearing marks the first time that the family of an Islamist terrorist have questioned his killing in the UK.
The senior investigating officer, a detective superintendent in Scotland Yard’s Counter-Terrorism Command, has been given the unusual step of being granted anonymity and was referred to only as HA6 and screened from the public.
He told the inquest that it was “never the plan” to search Amman’s room. Instead officers had hoped to spot Amman in the street wearing the fake suicide vest, which he was observed buying materials for, and then arrest him.
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Menon asked: “You were prepared to take the chance of having this man out on the street?”
“We had a well thought-out plan to manage the risk,” HA6 said.
However, Menon said that the plan was a “miserable failure”, adding: “Two people were stabbed and he was shot and killed.”
“Given the risk and threat and the methodology that this man represented and the manner of this attack, the police intervened extremely quickly to prevent something that could have been a lot worse or happened at a later date,” the officer said.
HA6 said that even with the benefit of hindsight he believed police did the right thing: “Myself, the police, MI5 and probation managed the threat as best as we could in the circumstance.”
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Had Amman been arrested too early, he would have been released on bail and would then have been aware of the covert surveillance operation, making him more difficult to observe, the officer said.
“If he had been arrested, he would have been back out in the community with more of an operational advantage around committing an attack,” the officer said.
The inquest continues.
