A convicted terrorist who stabbed two people to death at a prisoner rehabilitation conference had earlier told people there how he had turned his life around and abandoned the Islamist cause.
Usman Khan was asked by Catherine Jaquiss, a barrister, if he wanted to join her table for a workshop at the event in Fishmongers’ Hall, City of London.
“I remember he was saying something to the effect of . . . he had been involved in a group of people who had been leading him down the wrong path,” Jaquiss told the inquest for Khan’s victims yesterday. “He had now seen that way was wrong and he was now going in a different way.”
Jaquiss later heard screaming and a man entered the hall and said: “There is a man downstairs with knives and bombs strapped to him.” After being led out she heard “maybe three” gunshots.
Khan, 28, who had arrived at the conference on Friday November 29, 2019, with three knives, fatally stabbed Jack Merritt, 25, and Saskia Jones, 23, and injured three others before fleeing the building on to London Bridge. He was chased by John Crilly, Steven Gallant and Darryn Frost, who attended the conference. Crilly sprayed a fire extinguisher at Khan and Frost jabbed at him with a narwhal tusk taken from Fishmongers’ Hall. The three overpowered Khan with members of the public before police arrived and shot him dead.
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Jaquiss said that Khan had appeared “a little shy” but “I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary”.
Millicent Grant, a chartered legal executive, told the inquest that during the workshop he had “seemed to imply that if people, his friends for example, were not doing the right thing then he could influence them . . . as he spoke, he wasn’t animated. He was sat back in his chair, was straight-faced and had a clear, calm voice.”
After leaving the hall, she heard one or two shots, a pause, and five or seven shots in quick succession, she said.
Amy Coop, who was making a short video at the event, told the inquest that she had heard screaming and later saw Jones looking “very, very unwell” lying on a staircase. Coop said that as she left the hall she heard ten or 12 shots in two short bursts.
Video of the final ten minutes of Khan’s life, showing him writhing in agony on the pavement after he had first been tasered and shot at 2.02pm, was played to the jury. He was shown pulling his jacket over his head, exposing what appeared to be a suicide belt, and pulling a glove off his right hand before moving on to his side and sitting up. Detective Chief Inspector Dan Brown told the inquest that the puffs of smoke seen on Khan’s chest were where he was being shot again. He continue to writhe for two minutes until he became still at 2.12pm.
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Khan had been released from prison in December 2018, having served eight years after being convicted of planning terrorism. Brown said he believed Khan had put on the fake bomb on the train to London from his home in Stafford.
Video from about midday showed Khan talking “animatedly” to Jones at a table at the event, which was run by Learning Together, a Cambridge University scheme. During a break from about 1.30pm he went into a lavatory cubicle and taped knives to his gloves. He emerged at 1.56pm and stabbed Merritt, from Cottenham, Cambridgeshire, 12 times. He then stabbed Jones, from Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, in the neck. Both of them were Cambridge criminology graduates involved with Learning Together.
Khan also stabbed Stephanie Szczotko and Isobel Rowbotham, who both worked for Learning Together, and Lukasz Koczocik, a porter at the hall who tried to stop him.
The hearing, at Guildhall, continues. An inquest into Khan’s death will be held separately.
