The chief probation officer for England and Wales has accused MI5 of failing to sound the alarm about Usman Khan attending an event in London where he killed two people, an inquest has heard.
Sonia Flynn, the executive director of the probation service, said the security services should have stepped in when Khan’s possible attendance at the event in Fishmongers Hall was raised at a series of public protection, or “Mappa”, meetings MI5 attended.
Khan killed Jack Merritt and Saskia Jones in November 2019, 11 months after being released on licence for terrorist offences.
Mrs Flynn told an inquest into their deaths she was surprised MI5 did not appear to share intelligence about the growing security risk it assessed Khan posed to members of the public.
She said: “Those specialist police were invited [to public protection meetings] for a purpose, not to kind of observe the process, they were part of it and held a joint responsibility, to ensure that all available information was shared.”
She continued: “If a counter-terrorist police officer had been part of that group and just said, ‘No, this looks too risky in terms of the location, the amount of people who were there, and the fact that we couldn’t be physically next to him for the duration of the time’, there may have been a different outcome. Tragically, we’ll never know.”
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