2019 London Bridge stabbing

A conference on offender rehabilitation was held on 29 November 2019 in Fishmongers' Hall, at the northern end of London Bridge, in the City of London, to celebrate the fifth anniversary of Learning Together, a programme run by the Cambridge Institute of Criminology to help offenders reintegrate into society following their release from prison.[6] Learning Together was set up in 2014 by University of Cambridge academics Ruth Armstrong and Amy Ludlow from the Faculty of Law and Institute of Criminology[7] to "bring together people in criminal justice and higher education institutions to study alongside each other in inclusive and transformative learning communities"[8] to enable students and prisoners to work together.[7]

Former prisoner Usman Khan had been invited to the conference as a previous participant in the programme,[9] and although banned from entering London under the terms of his release, he was granted a one-day exemption to attend.[10][11]

At 13:58 on 29 November, the police were called to Fishmongers' Hall[12] after Khan, wearing a fake suicide vest, threatened to blow up the hall.[13] Holding two kitchen knives taped to his wrists, he began stabbing people inside the building.[14] Several fought back, including a Polish kitchen porter, Łukasz Koczocik, who fought Khan off with an ornamental spear,[15] a South African-born Londoner, Darryn Frost, who grabbed a 1.5-metre-long (4.9 ft) narwhal tusk from the wall to use as a weapon,[16] former prisoner John Crilly, and Steven Gallant, a convicted murderer attending the conference on day release from prison, after participating in the Learning Together programme.[17][18] Khan fled and began stabbing pedestrians outside on the north side of the bridge.[18]

Several people were injured before members of the public, including a tour guide[19][20] and a plain-clothes British Transport Police officer, later seen walking away with a knife, restrained and disarmed Khan on the bridge.[14][21] One of the people who stepped in to fight the attacker drove him back by spraying a fire extinguisher.[22][17]

Armed officers of the City of London Police arrived at 14:03 and surrounded the attacker, who at the time was being restrained by a Ministry of Justice communications worker attending the rehabilitation meeting.[23][24] The officers pulled this person away to provide a clear shot, before one fired twice.[25][21] At 14:10, Khan started to get up; he was then shot 10 further times by 6 firearms officers. Khan had not been secured after the initial shooting due to the suicide vest.[26] Khan died at the scene.[27]

A Transport for London bus which had stopped adjacent to the site of the shooting was found to have damage to both its front and rear windows, possibly caused, according to the Metropolitan Police, by a ricocheting bullet.[28]

Three of the victims were associated with Cambridge University's Learning Together prison-rehabilitation programme; two died and one was injured.[29] The two who died from their stab wounds[30] were Jack Merritt and Saskia Jones. Merritt was a 25-year-old law and criminology graduate who had studied at the University of Manchester and Cambridge University. As his Master's thesis, he had written about the "overrepresentation of Black, Asian, and minority ethnic males aged 18-21 in the British Prison System."[31] He worked as a University of Cambridge administration officer and was from Cottenham.[32] Jones, 23 years old, was a former Anglia Ruskin University[33] and University of Cambridge student from Stratford-upon-Avon.[34] Merritt was a course coordinator for Learning Together.[35] Funeral services for Merritt and Jones were conducted on 20 December 2019.[36]

Two other women were seriously injured, while a chef who was working at the event was stabbed but had less serious injuries.[37]

The attacker was identified as Usman Khan, a 28-year-old British national from Stoke-on-Trent, of Pakistani descent.[38] Khan appears to have left school with no qualifications after spending part of his late teens in Pakistan.[39] He was known to police and had links to Islamist extremist groups.[40][41] In December 2018 he had been automatically released from prison on licence, where he was serving a 16-year sentence for terrorism offences, and was wearing an electronic tag.[42][43][44]

Khan had been part of a plot, inspired by Al-Qaeda, to establish a terrorist camp on his family's land in Kashmir and bomb the London Stock Exchange.[45] The plot was disrupted by MI5 and the police, as part of MI5's Operation Guava.[46][47]), and Khan was given an indeterminate sentence.[48][49] Of the nine men involved, Khan was the youngest at 19 and according to Mr Justice Wilkie, Khan and two others were “more serious jihadis” than the others.[50] In 2013, his sentence was revised after an appeal, and he was ordered to serve at least 8 years of his new 16-year sentence, with a 5-year extended licence allowing recall to prison.[51]

According to the anti-extremism group Hope not Hate, Khan was a supporter of Al-Muhajiroun, an extremist group with which scores of terrorists were involved.[52] He was a student and a personal friend of Anjem Choudary, an Islamist and terrorism supporter.[53] Khan had previously participated in the Learning Together programme.[17]

Post-mortem examination showed evidence of "occasional use of cocaine" by Khan.[54]

The news of the attack was broken live as it happened on the BBC News Channel by one of its reporters, John McManus, who witnessed members of the public fighting Khan as he crossed the bridge, and heard two shots being fired by police officers. McManus said that he was certain that more than two shots were fired during the incident.[24] The police, ambulance, and fire services attended the scene and a major incident was declared.[21][55] A large police cordon was set up in the area and residents were told to stay away.[55][56] Police closed both Monument Underground station[21] and London Bridge station after the attack.[55][57] The police reported that there had been no prior intelligence of the attack.[55]

The Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, returned to Downing Street following the incident, after campaigning in his constituency for the forthcoming general election. Johnson commended the "immense bravery" of the emergency services and members of the public,[55] and claimed that anyone involved in the attack would be "hunted down".[58] The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, thanked the emergency services and members of the public who helped to restrain the attacker, saying they had shown "breathtaking heroism".[55] The Conservative Party, Labour Party and Liberal Democrats temporarily suspended campaigning in London for the general election.[55][58] A parliamentary election hustings event scheduled to be held at Great St Mary's Church in Cambridge on 30 November was cancelled and replaced by a memorial vigil for the victims of the attack.[59]

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick made a statement following the attack describing events. She said there would be an increased police presence on the streets and that cordons in the London Bridge area would remain in place. An appeal was made for the public to submit any film or picture evidence or information that could assist the investigation.[60]

In Pakistan, publication of Khan's Pakistani origins by the leading newspaper Dawn were deemed unpatriotic and defamatory, and led to demonstrations demanding that the publisher and the editor be hanged.[61][62][63]

The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack. Its news agency, Amaq, claimed Usman Khan was one of its fighters.[64][65] A janaza prayer for Khan was held at a mosque in Birmingham, and he was buried in his family's ancestral village in Pakistan, following objections to his burial in the UK by local Muslims in his native Stoke.[66]

In 2021, following an inquest, Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation Jonathan Hall QC called for those involved in the planning or preparation of terrorist attacks to be given automatic life sentences. Hall stated it was "hard to underestimate how serious Usman Khan’s original offence was."[67]

In March 2023, Gallant, Crilly, Frost and Lukasz Koczocik were awarded the Queen's Gallantry Medal for their actions during the attack.[15]

London Bridge was closed until the early hours of the following Monday for forensic investigation of the scene. Two properties, in Stafford, where Khan lived, and in Stoke-on-Trent, were searched by police.[72]

An inquest into the deaths of Merritt and Jones was opened on 4 December, at the Central Criminal Court in London, and was subsequently adjourned.[28][73] A pre-inquest review hearing took place at the Old Bailey on 16 October 2020, before the Chief Coroner of England and Wales, Mark Lucraft QC.[54] The Independent Office for Police Conduct is holding an investigation into the shooting.[28] In a separate investigation Staffordshire Police are also under IOPC scrutiny.[74]

The inquest reopened on 12 April 2021, presided over by Lucraft.[75] On May 28, 2021 the jury concluded the victims had been unlawfully killed and that insufficient monitoring of Khan, unreasonable belief in his rehabilitation, a lack of information sharing between agencies, and inadequate security planning at the event were all contributing factors in their deaths.[76]

Khan's inquest, also overseen by Lucraft[73] in June 2021 found that he was lawfully killed by the police.[77]

• 2017 London Bridge attack
• List of terrorist incidents in London
• List of terrorist incidents in Great Britain

• 2020 Interview with Darryn Frost, one of the people who tackled Khan