Probation 'unaware of MI5 probe into Usman Khan'

A court has heard how the probation officer for the Fishmongers' Hall attacker did not know MI5 were investigating the recently released terrorist.

Usman Khan was released from prison as a high-risk category A offender in December 2018, having spent eight years in jail for plotting a jihadist terror camp in his parents' homeland of Pakistan. The 28-year-old killed Saskia Jones and Jack Merritt at a prisoner education event at Fishmongers’ Hall in November 2019.

Ken Skelton told an inquest that the information that MI5 had upgraded Khan's potential risk when he left prison ‘would have had a huge impact upon his decision-making’.

The Security Service was concerned Khan had been continuing to radicalise other prisoners, and had launched an ‘open priority investigation’. Skelton told jurors at London's Guildhall if he had known of MI5's concerns ‘the whole management process would have altered’.

The inquests heard how Skelton authorised Khan's trip from Stafford to London's Fishmongers' Hall where the attack took place. But the officer insisted that the decision was signed off by the MAPPA (Multi Agency Public Protection Arrangements) panel.

The inquests continue.