FREE TO WAGE WAR
Faces of the jihadis freed to roam UK streets after early release
SUDESH Amman had been released from prison for a matter of days when he took a knife and stabbed two innocent people in a terrorist attack on Streatham High Street on Sunday.
The ‘knife-obsessed’ 19-year-old had been serving a three-year term for terror offences - but was set free on automatic early release after just 18 months, despite security services considering him to be highly dangerous.
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Shockingly, he is one of around 500 convicted terrorists who have been released in the UK in the last decade - and one of 74 released on licence under the automatic early release scheme, introduced in 2005.
According to the , MI5 and the police are monitoring at least 20 jihadi extremists on a daily basis in a bid to keep our streets safe.
Many of these jihadis are back living on the same streets where they were radicalised and more are set to be released within months.
The government has today unveiled a new “emergency law” to end early release for terrorists - but it’s unclear when the rule change will come into effect.
And disturbing research from the Henry Jackson Society, a think-tank which has tracked jihadis in Britain, shows some of the most serious dangerous offenders were allowed out to plan more attacks.
Usman Khan, who stabbed two people to death and injured three more in the London Bridge attack in November, was freed despite a judge saying he should never be let out.
A definitive list of all the jihadis currently roaming British streets is not publicly available - but here we reveal the faces of some of the convicted killers and hate preachers at large in the UK.
Kazi Islam
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Kazi Islam served half of an eight year sentence for grooming a teenager with Asperger’s to kill UK soldiers.
Islam was jailed in 2015 for trying to persuade Harry Thomas to buy ingredients for pipe bombs, but he was out in 2019.
Kazi Rahman
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Kazi Rahman, 43, is Kazi Islam's uncle and neighbour - and a convicted terrorist in his own right.
In 2006, he was sentenced to nine years' imprisonment when he tried to buy missiles to shoot down airliners.
He'd also tried to get his hands on a rocket-propelled grenade launcher and Uzi submachine guns.
Shockingly, he was released from prison in 2011.
Usman Khan (London Bridge attacker)
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Usman Khan was convicted in 2012 for a string of al-Qaeda-inspired terror offences, including a plot to blow up the London Stock Exchange.
He was sentenced to an “indeterminate sentence” with a minimum of eight years, but this was overturned on appeal in 2013, allowing Khan to automatically be released.
He was allowed out of Belmarsh Prison on temporary release licence in December 2018. He was considered a success story of a Cambridge University rehab programme, having befriended staff including of Jack Merritt and Saskia Jones, who he later stabbed to death before he was shot dead by police on London Bridge in December.
Mohammad Shahjahan
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Mo Shahjahan was part of a gang from Stoke and London jailed alongside Usman Khan for plotting to bomb the London Stock Exchange.
He was arrested in 2010 and given an indeterminate sentence which was changed to a fixed-term 17-year sentence on appeal in 2013, meaning he was eligible for early release.
He is believed to have been released in 2018, after serving eight and half years including remand.
Shah Rahman
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Bangladeshi-born Shah Rahman, 31, was part of the terror cell that Khan belonged to which plotted to bomb London’s Stock Exchange.
He was sentenced to “at least 12 years” in 2012.
It’s unclear as to when he was released on licence.
Ibrahim Abdullah-Hassan
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Ibrahim Abdullah-Hassan was arrested in May 2013 immediately after being interviewed on BBC Newsnight and claiming his pal, Michael Adebolajo (Lee Rigby’s killer), was offered a job by MI5.
Abdullah-Hassan, who was involved with Anjem Choudary’s hate group al-Muhajiroun, was jailed in 2014 for three years for inciting terrorism.
It is unclear when he was released.
Mohammed Hasnath
Mohammed Hasnath, 19, from East London was jailed for 14 months for possessing terrorist literature in May 2012.
He admitted four counts of having copies of al Qaeda's Inspire magazine on his computer memory stick and six offences of criminal damage after he painted burkas on bikini-clad women on posters and put up homophobic slogans.
He served seven months of his sentence.
Rebekah Dawson
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Rebekah Dawson was sentenced to 20 months in 2014 for posting clips on YouTube glorifying the horrific murder of Lee Rigby.
Dawson, who hailed from Hackney in east London and was 22 when she was convicted, also made headlines by refusing to remove her face veil.
The religious row broke out during Dawson's trial for a separate offence - witness intimidation.
She ultimately pleaded guilty to that charge and was sentenced to six months in prison.
Royal Barnes
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Rebekah Dawson’s husband, Royal Barnes, was also convicted for videos mocking Lee Rigby’s death.
He was handed five years and four months.
In one clip, Dawson filmed Barnes laughing as he drove past floral tributes to Rigby.
Gabriel Rasmus
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Rasmus was jailed in November 2016 after being caught hiding in a truck at Dover.
He’d stowed himself away in a bid to try to join Islamic State. He moved to the UK from South Africa in 1999 and has four kids with three women.
Rasmus converted to Islam in 2008. He was sentenced to four years and three months - but it is unclear when he was released.
Habib Ahmed
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Ahmed, a taxi driver, was arrested in Cheetham Hill, Manchester in August 2006.
He was convicted of directing terrorism on behalf of al-Qaeda in December 2008.
Ahmed had diaries with invisible ink writing in them which had the details of top al-Qaeda operatives.
He was sentenced to 10 years, but was living in a bail hostel in Manchester by September 2011, as he had spent five years on remand.
Houria Chahed Chentouf
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Houria accidentally dropped a memory stick containing a “mini-encyclopedia of weapons-making” from beneath her burka at Liverpool John Lennon Airport in October 2008.
She pleaded guilty to two terror offences.
She was sentenced to two years in November 2009, but she was free to go (having already served 382 days on remand since her arrest).
Did we take our eye off the ball?
Terror expert Dr Paul Stott, of the Henry Jackson Society, tells The Sun: “From 2018 there were a lot of people being released in a very short time but the focus seemed to be on those people returning from Syria and Iraq and how dangerous they would be.
“It missed the fact that there was a real challenge in the people who were being released who've already got convictions, who missed out on the opportunity to go to Syria and Iraq to live in their ‘perfect society’. So they're angry, they're likely to lash out.
“When you look at the detail of these last two attacks, it's not organised. It's about flailing about with anger.”
One in seven of the convicted terrorists released since 2010 had their sentences reduced or were freed through the early release system.
But Dr Stott says that in some cases, prison is strengthening radical views.
“With the networks within prisons like-minded people can associate together and reinforce those views,” he says.
“We saw that during the conflict in Northern Ireland and I think we're clearly seeing it again, with the jihadi prisoners. They are providing mutual support for one another in prison so they're not being reformed.”
But he says terrorists like Amman are acting alone, with no backing from formal organisations.
"It's a different type of terrorism from what we might have seen in earlier decades where it's much more centrally directed. These people are taking inspiration from them and then acting themselves."
Khuram Iqbal
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Cardiff Student Iqbal called himself “the father of terrorism” and posted over 800 links to extremist material online.
He also attempted to join the Jihadist cause when he fled to Kenya in 2011, but he was deported after being arrested 12 miles from the Somali border.
He was arrested in October 2013 and, at 21, was sentenced to three years and three months in September 2014.
Mohammed Benares
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Birmingham postie Mohammed Benares, one of Choudary's henchmen, was caged for two years in 2013 after downloading an online al-Qaeda magazine "glorifying" terrorism.
The 44-year-old was arrested with 53 copies of Inspire, which detailed how to make bombs and plan atrocities.
Police also found copies of a document called 39 Ways to Serve and Participate in Jihad and speeches by al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden.
Benares claimed to be “researching” extremism, but was convicted of possessing terrorist information at London’s Southwark Crown Court.
Despite the shocking offence, he was released well before his sentence was up.
Mohibur Rahman
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Another of the cell jailed for the Stock Exchange plot with Usman Khan, Rahman was sentenced to five years, in 2012, after admitting to owning copies of an al-Qaeda magazine for terrorist purposes, which included a recipe for a pipe bomb.
Released “six months early” because his lawyer argued he was undertaking “de-radicalisation” in jail, he was jailed again in August 2017 for plotting a “mass casualty attack” targeting police or military with two other men.
They were caught when a sting operation found a partially complete pipe bomb and meat cleaver with the Arabic word for “nonbeliever” in the car of one of the co-conspirators, Naweed Ali.
He’s currently serving life with a minimum of 20 years over the 2017 conviction.
Omar Latif
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Latif was also part of the Stock Exchange plot and was sentenced to ten years and four months in 2012, plus five more on extended licence.
The Mirror reported that he was freed last year.
Shah Jalal Hussain
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Hussain was freed on December 5, 2015 after just 18 months of a three-year sentence for disseminating terrorist material and encouraging terrorism. He ran a website showing video rants by hate clerics such as Abu Hamza and Abu Qatada.
In 2008, he was convicted of collecting money for terrorists in Iraq and got two years.
He was freed early despite encouraging terror attacks abroad and making fundraising pleas during speeches at the Regent’s Park Mosque in London.
Simon Keeler
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Simon Keeler is a former member of Al-Muhajiroun and now leader of another Islamist group, Ahlus Sunnah wal Jamaah.
He was given 28 days imprisonment after assaulting a police officer during a protest and he was arrested again after fighting a BNP member.
He was convicted of terrorist fundraising and inciting terrorism overseas in 2008 and given three years and six months.
He was also caught on a train in Hungary without a passport in November 2015.
He was convicted in January 2016 of breaching the Terrorism Act for leaving the UK illegally, and was sentenced to two years.
Trevor Brooks - AKA Abu Izzadeen
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London-born covert Trevor Brooks who took the name Abu Izzadeen was convicted on charges of terrorist fund-raising and inciting terrorism overseas on 17 April 2008, and sentenced to four and a half years in jail. He was released in May 2009, after serving three and a half years, including time on remand.
Along with Keeler, he breached the terms of his licence by trying to travel to Turkey and was jailed again for two years in 2016.
David Souann
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Souann, then 20, was arrested at Heathrow in May 2013 as he attempted to travel to Syria to join ISIS and he said he wanted the black flag of ISIS to fly over Downing street.
He was jailed for three and a half years at the Old Bailey, in February 2015, but was released a year later.
Iftikhar Ali
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Former Sainsbury's shop assistant Ali, from High Wycombe, was jailed for three and a half years, in January 2018, for sharing Islamic State propaganda on WhatsApp.
The teenager, radicalised at 17, was released last year.
Imran Mahmood
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Imran Mahmood was jailed for nine years in 2013, for his part in a plot to bomb Wootton Bassett and murder the heads of MI5 and MI6.
He is believed to have been released in 2019 after serving two thirds of his sentence.
Jahangir Sheik Alom
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Jahangir Alom was convicted alongside white convert Richard Dart and Imran Mahmood over a vile plot to attack the town of Wootton Bassett.
For four years, the sleepy Wiltshire town was on the route of fallen British soldiers' repatriation when being brought back from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Bangladesh-born Alom, then 26, was jailed for four years and six months in 2013. Incredibly, Alom used to be a police community support officer - he said in a YouTube video that he left the Met after "brothers" showed him the true path.
He was released on licence in 2013.
Jordan Horner
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Horner was a member of the “Muslim Patrol” who roamed East London attacking members of the public for ‘unIslamic behaviour’.
The 19-year-old convert, who uses the Islamic name Jamaal Uddin, threatened to stab five men for drinking.
On December 2013 he was sentenced to 17 months and released on licence in 2014.
Mizanur Rahman
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Released in 2010 after serving three years of a four year sentence for soliciting murder, Rahman was arrested again in 2014.
Tried alongside hate preacher Anjem Choudary, in August 2016, he was sentenced to 5 years and 6 months' imprisonment for rallying support for ISIS, but released after two years, on October 24 2018, under licence.
Umran Javed
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The former spokesman for banned terror organisation Al-Muhajiroun was jailed for six years in 2007, for inciting murder and racial hatred after chanting “Bomb USA” outside the Danish embassy, after a cartoon of Mohammed was published in a Danish magazine.
He served half his sentence but was re-arrested in 2012 for possession of terrorist-related material and served six weeks of a year-long sentence after remand was considered.
Abdul Muhid
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Muhid was convicted of soliciting murder in 2007 during the Danish cartoon row (alongside Urman Javad and Mizanur Rahman).
He was given six years for that and three years concurrently for stirring up racial hatred.
In prison, he set up Muslimprisoners.com, where he allegedly advocated for prisoners to pretend to be reformed so they could be freed to resume their lives as “combatants” in a “state of war” against the UK. He is now back on Britain's streets.
Umar Arshad and Syed Farban Hussain
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Arshad and Hussain were part of a four-man plot to blow up a Territorial Army base in Luton by sending a bomb in a toy car.
In April 2013, ringleaders Zahid Iqbal, Mohammed Sharfaraz Ahmed were given extended terms of 16 years and three months, including 11 years in jail.
Arshad was jailed for six years and nine months and Hussain for five years and three months.
They were both thought to have served half of their respective sentences.
Abdul Rahman Saleem
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Notorious Islamic activist Saleem, also known as Abu Yahya, was jailed for four years in April 2007 after being convicted of inciting racial hatred during a London protest against the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.
He was also captured on camera yelling "7/7 on its way". After serving less than three years behind bars, Saleem was released in August 2009.
Syed Choudhury
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Arrested in December 2014, Choudhury was charged with supporting a proscribed organisation and assisting in the preparation of an act of terrorism.
He saved up £3,000 working in fast-food chain to travel to Syria to join ISIS, but he was caught before he could go.
He was sentenced to three years and four months but has since been released.
Asfor Ali
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Ali, then 27, was locked up for 31 months in 2014 after posting a YouTube video warning of a terror attack on Prince William and Kate Middleton’s wedding.
He also claimed the 9/11 attacks were a blessing and had a library of terror manuals, London’s Old Bailey heard.
He was released after just 11 months behind bars.
In 2018, it was reported that Ali had been working in B&Q for a year - after changing his name to con bosses and claiming he had no previous convictions. He has since been sacked.
Soon to be released
The convicted terrorists and extremists back walking our streets could soon be joined by a new wave of dangerous characters.
Other jihadi lags are expected to be released from prison on licence in upcoming months - including Sheffield con Khalil Maher, 24, who tried to secretly travel to Syria to join the Islamic State.
Maher - who was arrested at Heathrow Airport - was jailed for five years, four months, in November 2017, but is understood to be due out of prison later this month after serving just half his sentence.
And Sunderland shopkeeper Mohammed Zahir Khan, 41, is thought to be due for release in the next few months, too - despite being jailed for more than four years in May 2018 for posting support for ISIS online.
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Sunday's Streatham attack has shone a light on the UK's automatic early release laws - which have been slammed for leaving our neighbourhoods "unsafe" and allowing jihadists to "ignite terror" across the nation.
But if PM Boris Johnson gets his way, the waves of convicted terrorists returning to the streets could soon become trickles, or nothing at all.
latest news
Vowing to crack down on the early release of terrorist prisoners, Mr Johnson said today: "I think the question that everybody has about the individual concerned [in the Streatham attack] is, what was he doing out on automatic early release, and why was there no system of scrutiny, no parole system, to check whether he was really a suitable candidate for automatic early release.
"And that is a very complex legal question. We do think it's time to take action.
"I hope people understand that the anomaly we need to clear up is the process by which some people are still coming out under automatic early release without any kind of scrutiny or parole system."
What is automatic early release?
UNDER British law, criminals serving a determinate – or fixed – sentence of less than four years are automatically released from prison halfway through their term.
They then spend the remaining half of their sentence on licence, during which they must adhere to certain conditions like good behaviour and staying in touch with their probation officer.
This has been the case since 2005, when the provisions of the 2003 Criminal Justice Act were implemented.
Lags serving a determinate sentence of more than four years can also be released at the halfway point, but this doesn't happen automatically - a parole board must agree to it.
In the cases of those serving an indeterminate - non-fixed - or life sentence, the UK Government has to apply for parole on the prisoner's behalf.
The intention of early release is to rehabilitate prisoners in the community while managing the populations inside Britain’s overcrowded prisons.
However, recent atrocities, including the Streatham stabbing yesterday afternoon and the deadly London Bridge attack in November, have raised questions about the rules.
Streatham attacker Sudesh Amman had been released on licence last month, and is reported to have been living in a bail hostel in south London, with an electronic tag fitted.
It is also understood he was under 24-hour police surveillance – something that comes at a huge cost. One retired police detective said yesterday it takes a team of 32 officers to carry out round-the-clock surveillance on an individual target.
Meanwhile, London Bridge attacker Usman Khan was a convicted terrorist who was on probation after being freed halfway through his sentence under automatic early release rules.
In the wake of the November attack, the Government proposed a raft of changes, including scrapping early release for offenders classed as dangerous, giving those convicted of serious crimes like preparing acts of terrorism a minimum of 14 years behind bars, and forcing dangerous terrorists who receive extended determinate sentences to serve the whole time in prison.
Under the Counter Terrorism (Sentencing and Release) Bill, offenders not classed as dangerous would also be expected to serve two thirds of their sentences – rather than just half – while the number of counter-terrorism probation officers would be doubled.
Today, PM Boris Johnson made a fresh vow to crack down on the early release of terrorist prisoners following the Streatham knife rampage – although it’s not clear how any changes would be applied to existing cases.
"We are bringing forward legislation to stop the system of automatic early release. The difficulty is how to apply retrospectively to the cohort of people who currently qualify," said Mr Johnson.
"It is time to take action to ensure, irrespective of the law we are bringing in, people in the current stream don't qualify automatically for early release."
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