For the White House, it was just another line on the list: “London, England, UK; December 2015.” It featured in the timeline of 78 attacks issued on Monday that, according to Trump logic, the media underreported to play down the threat of Islamist extremism, which only the president understands and knows how to fix.
For Lyle Zimmerman, it was the day he survived an attempted beheading at Leytonstone tube station. Having remained anonymous until his attacker’s trial last June, partly to avoid fuelling Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric, the American is “outraged” to find himself included in what he views as extremist propaganda. He is not the only one. The mother of British backpacker Mia Ayliffe-Chung, murdered in Queensland last August, has also accused Donald Trump of spreading “fake news” about her daughter’s death to further the “persecution of innocent people”.
“There is a strong current in American politics now that, from my perspective, is extremism, says Zimmerman, who lives in north London. “I have always wanted to provide minimal fuel for it because my attack wasn’t even terrorism.”
Muhiddin Mire jumped Zimmerman, 56, in the station’s ticket hall, beating him unconscious before sawing at his neck with a rusty breadknife. The blade broke before it reached his windpipe, inflicting deep cuts that required 19 stitches. Mobile phone footage of the aftermath went viral, showing Mire, 30, pacing menacingly around the station before police Tasered him. Like so many of the attacks on the list, it made headlines all over the world, including in the US.
Mire had shouted, “This is for Syria, my Muslim brothers” and had downloaded Isis propaganda to his phone.
“You ain’t no Muslim, bruv,” the retort of one passer-by captured in the footage, garnered yet more coverage. Police initially treated the attack as terrorism, but Mire was convicted of attempted murder. Scotland Yard said during the trial that it would not class the attack as a terrorist incident. Mire had been sectioned years earlier, and missed a mental health appointment days before the attack. Last August, he received a life sentence and was transferred to Broadmoor, the high-security psychiatric hospital.
“This was a guy with profound mental illness whose family had been trying to get him help,” Zimmerman says. “I was back in the pub days later. It wasn’t a big deal for me, but it was a big media event and I did not want it to be sensationalised.”
Zimmerman waived his anonymity to give evidence at the trial. He then agreed to speak to the Guardian because he felt he could contribute to the gun-control debate after the Orlando nightclub attack, which happened days after the trial. Had his own attack taken place in the US, Zimmerman believes Mire might have shot him before being killed by police. “Instead, I’m OK, and he’s nobody’s martyr,” he said in the interview last July. “I think that’s a great civil society outcome.”
The biologist, who moved to London from the US in 2001, has been dismayed by events in his home country, including the president’s travel ban targeting some Muslim countries. “They are pursuing profoundly counterproductive policies,” he says. “[Trump is] handing propaganda coups to real extremists ... And do you know what? The police officers who came to my aid, and were decorated for bravery; some of those guys were Muslims. The doctors and nurses who looked after me brilliantly – many of those guys were Muslim. These policies are only designed to create division.”
