Fishmongers' event organisers 'should stand down'

The uncles of Saskia Jones have said that the organisers of the Fishmongers' Hall event where two people were killed by a convicted terrorist should step down.

Saskia and Jack Merritt were stabbed to death by Usman Khan at the event hosted by Cambridge University Learning Together programme, held in central London in November 2019.

Phil and Pete Jones have said, following an inquest into the attack finding that key authorities had lost sight of the risk Khan posed, that they would be ‘insulted’ if the leaders of Cambridge University Learning Together programme stayed in their roles.

Last month, the jury in the Fishmongers' Hall inquest concluded that the agencies responsible for managing him had been ‘blinded’ by his ‘poster boy image’.

As part of the inquest, Dr Ruth Armstrong and Dr Amy Ludlow, the programme’s leaders, said that they would not rule out working with terrorist offenders in the future. Phil and Pete Jones told the BBC that Armstrong and Ludlow had ‘lost sight of their duty to protect their staff, volunteers and the public’.

Khan was a guest at the prisoner education event, held by Learning Together. However, it has since been revealed that Saskia, who had been a volunteer for the programme, wasn't told about his background before she sat down at his table and started chatting with him.

She and jack Merritt were later stabbed by Khan, who was then chased onto nearby London Bridge by some of the other guests, where he was shot dead by police.

The Cambridge University Learning Together programme teaches university students and student prisoners side-by-side and Khan became one of their students in prison. Khan had been monitored in the community by the probation service, the police and MI5. They allowed him to go to Fishmongers' Hall that day without a police escort.

Learning Together, which has received several awards and was praised by the independent prison inspector in 2017, has been suspended by Cambridge University as it reviews how it is run.