The Islamic State terror group has taken credit for the Sunday knife attack in Streatham, London that left three people injured.
“The perpetrator of the attack in Streatham district in south London yesterday is a fighter of Islamic State, and carried out the attack in response to calls to attack the citizens of coalition countries,” ISIS said Monday in a press release through the group’s official Amaq news agency. Fox News reported the statement and confirmed it as accurate.
The London Metropolitan Police Service identified the suspect as Sudesh Amman, 20. The suspect strapped a fake bomb to his chest and stabbed two people in the attack. A bystander became the third injured person when police fired their weapons, shattering glass that hit her.
Police shot and killed the Amman shortly after the attack began.
According to BBC, Amman pleaded guilty in November 2018 to possessing and disseminating terrorist manuals and videos. Those manuals included instructions on bomb-making and how best to carry out knife attacks like the one seen on Sunday.
Amman had reportedly shown beheading videos to his girlfriend and told her to kill her “kuffar” (non-believer) parents.
In a move that would appear to confirm his ISIS ties, Amman also told his girlfriend he had sworn allegiance to the terror group. He reportedly told her that ISIS was the best thing to come out of Islam.
He was released from prison on Jan. 23, 2020 after serving roughly half his sentence in custody. He had been fitted with a GPS monitor, was made to surrender his passport and was excluded from going to certain areas like airports and ports for water travel.
Counter-Terrorism police were reportedly following Amman’s movements as part of a counter-terror operation. They were unable to intercept Amman before the bloodshed began, though police soon after confirmed the attack as “terror-related.”
Amman’s early release has reportedly prompted the British government to consider emergency legislation stopping the practice of early release.
“Yesterday’s appalling incident makes the case plainly for immediate action,” Justice Secretary Robert Buckland told lawmakers. “We will therefore introduce emergency legislation to put an end to terrorist offenders getting released automatically having served half of their sentence with no check or review.”
Prime Minister Boris Johnson expressed his own support for ending early release.
“This is a liberal country, it is a tolerant country, but I think the idea of automatic early release for people who obviously continue to pose a threat to the public has come to the end of its useful life,” Johnson said.
Johnson also expressed concern with how to use imprisonment as a corrective action.
“Do you detain them en bloc, in one group, and try to keep them together because that avoids them, as it were, infecting or passing the virus of their beliefs to others in jails, or do you disperse them and try to stop them reinfecting each other?” he asked.
