BBC News
image copyrightMet Police
image captionSaskia Jones, 23, and Jack Merritt, 25, were killed by Usman Khan during a conference on rehabilitating offenders
Three simple facts became crystal clear over the course of the inquests into the Fishmongers Hall terrorism attack, in which Jack Merritt and Saskia Jones died at the hand of Usman Khan.
Firstly, Khan, had entered and left prison as one of the most dangerous terrorism offenders of his generation.
Secondly, while counter-terrorism experts and investigators fully understood the threat he posed, some of the people directly interacting with Khan did not know all of those fears.
And thirdly, by the time Khan had decided to kill, nobody knew whether he was plotting or not - and so his trip went ahead without anyone being sure what risk he posed when he was allowed to travel to London alone.
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The 40 warning signs missed by police and security services on Fishmonger s Hall attacker Usman Khan
A multitude of oversights meant a convicted terrorist was freed on Christmas Eve 2018, less than a year later he would brutally murder two
28 May 2021 • 2:01pm
Usman Khan, then Abu Saif, addresses the public from a weekly rally held by Islamic extremists in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, in February 2010
Credit: Stoke Sentinel/BPM Media
In the eight years leading up to Usman Khan s attack on Fishmongers’ Hall, MI5, the probation service and counter-terrorism police were aware of more than 40 warning signs that the convicted terrorist craved “martyrdom” in a suicidal jihadi outrage.
Usman Khan: Profile of a killer 28/05/2021, 2:30 pm
Usman Khan killed Cambridge University graduates Jack Merritt and Saskia Jones at a prisoner rehabilitation event near London Bridge on November 29 2019 (West Midlands Police/PA)
Usman Khan was deluded, deceptive and dangerous.
And on a cold November afternoon in 2019, those three swirling character traits that had surfaced briefly but consistently during his adult life combined to deadly effect.
Much was known and recorded about homegrown terrorist Khan’s deviant behaviour before that fateful day.
He was jailed in 2012 for plotting a terror camp in his parents’ homeland of Pakistan, and was known in prison as the “main inmate” for extremist views.