Fishmongers’ Hall inquests: Terrorist said academics were like ‘family’ eight months before he stabbed them

Usman Khan said ‘thank you’ to staff from Learning Together programme he later targeted, adding: ‘You guys are my friends’

Usman Khan and Saskia Jones talking at a Learning Together event at Fishmongers’ Hall before he launched his attack (Metropolitan Police)

A terrorist said a group of academics were like “family” to him in a video recorded eight months before he targeted them in a knife rampage.

Usman Khan murdered two people at a fifth anniversary celebration held at Fishmongers’ Hall in London by Cambridge University’s Learning Together programme.

Speaking about his experience of the scheme in March 2019, Khan said it became “kind of a family” and “like a community”.

“Learning Together matters and it should matter, what they are doing is making a difference and I can’t stress that enough,” he added.

“To all the team - thank you very much. For myself it was to let out my personality, I never got that opportunity before.”

In a research interview recorded by Learning Together staff on the same day, Khan was asked if he had any friends after leaving prison and replied: “I haven’t got no friends. You guys are my friends.”

One victim, 25-year-old Jack Merritt, was a course coordinator for the scheme, while the second Saskia Jones, 23, had volunteered.

Khan also stabbed another Learning Together staff member and a student who attended its courses, who both survived, during the rampage on 29 November 2019.

The inquests into his victims’ deaths heard that Khan joined the programme in 2017, while serving a sentence for preparing terrorist acts in a high-security prison.

He was freed in December 2018 but Learning Together staff kept in touch with him, and invited him to an event at Cambridge University the following March.

Police and probation officers did not grant permission for Khan to attend, and he instead agreed to record a video to be shown at the event.

Footage played to the jury on Friday showed Khan wearing a patterned jumper and with a neatly-trimmed beard at his probation hostel in Stafford.

Appearing animated and upbeat, he said he started doing his own creative writing while in a prison segregation unit and later applied to join the “Writing Together” course run by Learning Together.

Jack Merritt, 25, and Saskia Jones, 23, were murdered during the 2019 Fishmongers’ Hall terror attack (Metropolitan Police)

Khan said he did not think he would be accepted on the course, which the inquests heard was subject to security checks by prison officials, but was allowed to attend.

“The main thing was breaking the barriers, accepting people for who they are, accepting what background you come from,” he added. “It didn’t matter your previous conviction or what you believed it was about that moment. It was about mutual respect.”

The video finished with Khan reciting a poem he wrote called “light in darkness”, which talked about a “single seed planted in mud becoming a strong tree”.

Dr Ruth Armstrong, the co-founder of Learning Together who filmed the video with a colleague, broke down crying as it was played at London’s Guildhall.

“We had absolutely no indication of any concerns [about Khan],” she said. “If we had, we would of course have made different decisions.”

The inquests heard that Khan’s attendance at the event at Fishmongers’ Hall was approved by MI5, police and other agencies monitoring him following his release from prison.

Staffordshire Police said they “could not justify” escorting Khan on the train from Stafford to London, where investigators believe he strapped a fake suicide vest to himself in a toilet.

MI5 had received intelligence that Khan may be planning an attack around the time he was freed, but it was not shared with Learning Together. Nor was information that during his time in prison, Khan had been radicalising other inmates and been involved in violence and forced conversions.

Dr Armstrong said that if Learning Together had been told of the intelligence he would not have been invited to the Fishmongers’ Hall event. The inquests continue.