Two people were stabbed to death and three others injured in a "terrorist" attack at London Bridge on Friday, police said. The man who carried out the Black Friday attack on the iconic London Bridge is a terror convict. He was out on parole when he stabbed a man and woman to death, besides injuring three others.
Identified as 28-year-old, Usman Khan was convicted in 2012. "He was released from prison in December 2018 on licence and clearly, a key line of enquiry now is to establish how he came to carry out this attack," the BBC quoted London Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu as saying. Khan had been living in the Staffordshire area of central England, the police said, where searches are still being carried out in connection to the attack.
According to reports, Usman Khan was Pakistan-origin and wanted to establish a terrorist camp in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir and wanted to recruit Britons to fight in Kashmir. In 2012, Khan became a convicted terrorist for his role in the Stock Exchange plot, a planned scheme for a Christmas bomb attack on the London Stock Exchange, the American embassy and the home of Boris Johnson, who was then the Mayor of London. At the time of his sentencing, the judge warned that he was a "serious jihadist" who should not be released while he remained a threat to the public, reported the Telegraph. Khan pleaded guilty in 2012 to preparing acts of terrorism as a member of an al-Qaeda-inspired terrorist cell which contained eight other men, said the report.
The knifeman, wearing a suspected hoax explosive device, was shot dead by police after the daylight assault on Friday that also saw bystanders intervene to try and disarm him. Five were were wounded in the stabbing spree that came less than two weeks before Britain votes in a general election, and revived memories of a three-man attack two years ago on London Bridge that killed eight. Footage filmed by eyewitnesses and shared on social media showed a scrum of people tackling the suspect on the ground before the police arrived.
(Inputs from Agencies)
