Lawyers for the victims of the Fishmongers’ Hall terrorist Usman Khan have repeatedly accused his family at an inquest in central London of ignoring his “nasty” nature and failing to challenge his extremism.
Khan’s older brother, who cannot be named, insisted the family did all it could and was unaware of his violent record in prison.
He also made a direct apology to the families of Jack Merritt and Saskia Jones, who were stabbed to death by Khan at a prisoner education event at the hall in central London in November 2019.
Opening his evidence at the Guildhall in the City of London, Khan’s brother said: “First of all, sincere condolences to Jack and Saskia’s family. We are truly, truly sad of the events that happened.”
Over the course of 90 minutes, counsel for the families of Merritt and Jones accused Khan’s family of ignoring warning signs in the run-up to the attack.
Nick Armstrong, representing the Merritts, said: “He [Khan] was a nasty, violent, self-regarding piece of work. All the signs were there and you looked away, didn’t you?”
The witness looked down and gave an inaudible reply.
Earlier, the witness said Khan had “kept everything to himself” and the family were unaware of his extremism. “We didn’t turn a blind eye, we tried to do as best as we could,” the inquest heard.
Henry Pitchers, representing Jones’s family, challenged this by referring to 2008 images of Khan handing out extremist literature, holding a jihadi flag and appearing at press conference with the hate preacher Anjem Choudary.
Pitchers said: “I just want to suggest to you that this isn’t really keeping everything to himself.”
The witness said: “We only found out about these guys after he got arrested.”
When Khan later admitted charges linked to a terrorist plot to bomb the London Stock Exchange, the news was “a total shock” to his family, the inquest heard.
After his release from prison in 2018, Khan would regularly visit the family home but would routinely dismiss any queries from them about his past, the witness said. “He said ‘I was young, I was silly, I got into stupid things’.”
Asked whether Khan’s relatives should have pressed him further on what he was up to, the brother said: “We did our best. We mainly relied on the people who were monitoring him because he had a tag on.
“If we noticed anything suspicious, we would have been the first ones to alert.”
The witness said he saw Khan the Sunday before the Fishmongers’ Hall attack and he appeared “absolutely normal”.
Describing the moment the family found out that Khan had carried out a terrorist attack and had been shot by police, he said: “I didn’t want to tell my mum in case she had a heart attack. I was stressed. I was shocked …… It wasn’t registering … Then it hit me. I thought: whoa, no way.”
Later the inquest heard that Khan acted like “a sulky teenager” when challenging an intelligence assessment in the year before his attack.
Steve Machin, the head of counter-terrorism at Whitemoor prison in Cambridgeshire, told the hearing that Khan showed signs of progress and “prosocial” behaviour before he was released in December 2018, 11 months before his attack.
He said: “I was aware it had been an edict from a terrorist group permitting Islamic extremists to start using the tactic of deceptive compliance. Working in a prison so long, you naturally apply that filter to everyone you work with.”
Machin suggested he believed Khan’s progress was genuine, saying it was hard to engineer the appearance of being happy.
Machin recalled a meeting with Khan in the summer of 2018 when they discussed a “worrying” security assessment about Khan’s intent on radicalising other prisoners. Machin said: “He was almost a sulky teenager in his presentation. He said what I was quoting came from prisoners who didn’t like him.”
Machin confirmed that in the month Khan was released, a meeting about managing public protection was presented with intelligence about Khan radicalising others and wanting to “return to his old ways”. This intelligence was regarded as “low grade”, Machin said, “because it wasn’t corroborated or supported by others”.
Machin said he talked with Khan at the Learning Together event at Fishmongers’ Hall in the hours before the attack. “[Khan] threw his arms open and stepped in for a hug, which felt a bit weird, for me. I met him halfway, took one hand and did a prisoner-style shoulder bump.”
Machin said: “He talked about things he had done, and said we need to get people not employed by prison in, because imams hadn’t been able to alter his position of his religion.”
Jonathan Hough, counsel to the inquests, said: “Even that morning, he was telling you a lie.”
Asked if he had reflected on his dealings with Khan, Machin said: “It’s all I’ve done since – as a human being it’s hard not to.”
The inquest continues.
