LONDON—The British government said it would introduce emergency legislation to prevent the automatic early release of people convicted of terror offenses, a day after police shot and killed a man recently freed from jail who wounded two people in a knife attack.
Sudesh Amman, 20 years old, had recently been released from prison after serving part of his sentence for distributing terrorism-related material. He was wearing a fake suicide vest while carrying out the attack, London’s Metropolitan Police said.
He was the second such offender on early release to carry out a knife attack in London in just over two months.
Justice Secretary Robert Buckland told the House of Commons that emergency legislation would be introduced “to ensure an end to terrorist offenders getting released automatically having served half of their sentence with no check or review.” The new law would also apply to people currently serving their sentences, he said.
All terrorist offenders would have to serve at least two-thirds of their sentences, and any early release would need to be agreed to by the parole board, which would be strengthened so it could deal more effectively with the risks convicted terrorists posed to public safety, he said.
“We face an unprecedented situation of severe gravity,” he said.
The government announced a review of the automatic early release policy after the knife attack in late November near London Bridge, in which two people and the attacker were killed. But it wasn’t clear at the time that the changes that were being proposed after that attack would apply to existing prisoners.
That attacker, Usman Khan, 28, had been released from prison 11 months earlier under a set of conditions that included an internet ban, a curfew and limitations on his movements and meetings. He carried a GPS tag allowing authorities to track his whereabouts.
Earlier Monday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson described it as an anomaly that some people convicted of terror offenses were still being freed under automatic early release without any kind of scrutiny or parole system.
Mr. Amman had been sentenced in December 2018 to three years and four months in prison for distributing terrorist information, after having already served part of the sentence, and was released early. Armed police were able to respond quickly on Sunday because they were trailing him.
Police said Mr. Amman, who had been released from prison on Jan. 23, had stolen a knife from a shop. The time taken for him to enter the shop and start his attack was about 60 seconds. Police shot and killed him after a further roughly 60 seconds.
Officials in the U.K. and elsewhere in Europe have acknowledged the growing security challenge stretched counterterrorism services face from people convicted of terror offenses returning into the community after serving their sentences, a parallel test to one posed by jihadists returning from Middle East war zones. Sentences for terror offenses are generally shorter across Europe than they are in the U.S.
Prison-reform advocates have argued that longer sentences rarely provide an answer, saying incarceration sometimes only serves to further radicalize individuals. They say resources need to be focused on effective deradicalization programs.
People like Mr. Khan—originally sentenced for his part in a bomb plot focused on the London Stock Exchange and other targets—also present a challenge to the legal system. He carried out his attack while attending a conference on deradicalization, having convinced the authorities that he had recanted his terrorist views.
Write to Stephen Fidler at stephen.fidler@wsj.com
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2020-02-03 20:11:00Z
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