“Sentenced to a minimum of 8 years in prison in 2012 with a requirement that the parole board assess his danger to the public before release, he was released in December 2018 – without a parole board assessment….When sentencing Khan in 2012, Wilkie said that he was so dangerous that he was imposing a so-called imprisonment for public protection (IPP) indeterminate sentence of 8 years.”
So he was “so dangerous” in 2012 that he was given an “imprisonment for public protection (IPP) indeterminate sentence of 8 years.”
How a sentence can be “indeterminate” and for eight years is left unexplained. The more important question, however, is what changed so that he was considered to be no longer dangerous. Why was he judged leniently? Because he said he had changed. And ever-credulous British officials, anxious not to appear “Islamophobic,” believed him.
“Usman Khan: Al-Qaeda-inspired militant launched London Bridge attack,” Reuters, November 30, 2019:
Nine years before Usman Khan killed two people in a stabbing spree on London Bridge, he was overheard by British security services discussing how to use an Al-Qaeda manual he had memorized to build a pipe bomb.
It was a snippet of conversation, along with other intelligence about a plot to bomb the London Stock Exchange, that prompted British police to arrest Khan – then 19 years old – and a group of older men on Dec. 20, 2010.
Sentenced to a minimum of 8 years in prison in 2012 with a requirement that the parole board assess his danger to the public before release, he was released in December 2018 – without a parole board assessment….
When sentencing Khan in 2012, Wilkie said that he was so dangerous that he was imposing a so-called imprisonment for public protection (IPP) indeterminate sentence of 8 years.
“The long, monitored, discussions of Usman Khan about the madrassa (training camp) and his attitudes towards it and terrorism are highly eloquent of the seriousness of their purpose,” Wilkie said.
In effect, it meant he would remain incarcerated as long as he was considered to be a danger to the public and that the parole board should assess whether he should be released.
But in 2011, then-Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron announced a review of the IPP sentencing. The IPP was abolished in 2012.
After Khan appealed his sentence, appeal court judges in 2013 quashed the indeterminate period of incarceration, and he was given a determinate sentence of 16 years – meaning he could be released after serving just half of his term.
Court of Appeal judges said at the time that the Parole Board should consider whether those convicted were safe enough to be released. The Parole Board said on Saturday that it had not been involved in deciding Khan’s release.
“The Parole Board can confirm it had no involvement with the release of the individual identified as the attacker,” the board said, adding that Khan “appears to have been released automatically on license (as required by law), without ever being referred to the Board.”…