Britain’s political leaders are sparring over who is responsible for the early release of a convicted extremist who launched a stabbing attack in central London on Friday that left two people dead and three injured.
The argument centers over the early release from prison of Usman Khan, who served about half his sentence before being set free.
After a one-day pause out of respect for victims, the Friday attack is dominating the political scene as the election nears. The vote is set for Dec. 12.
Photo: EPA-EFE
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson yesterday blamed Khan’s freedom on changes in sentencing rules made by the last Labour Party government before Johnson’s Conservative Party took power in 2010 and he promised to toughen sentencing laws.
“We are going to bring in tougher sentences for serious sexual and violent offenders and for terrorists,” he told the BBC’s Andrew Marr. “I absolutely deplore the fact that this man was out on the street, I think it was absolutely repulsive and we are going to take action.”
However, he sought to distance himself from decisions made by previous Conservative governments.
When pushed on the record of the Tories on law and order and spending since 2010, Johnson repeatedly said that he has only been prime minister since the summer, and that previous governments had to implement “prudent” management of public finances.
He also announced plans to review Britain’s security, defense and foreign policy in the wake of the terror attack, which came ahead of a NATO summit that begins in London later today.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn accused the Conservatives of trying to provide security “on the cheap,” but said that he did not agree that convicted terrorists always should serve out their full prison terms.
“It depends on the circumstances; it depends on the sentence, but crucially it depends on what they’ve done in prison,” Corbyn said in an interview on Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday.
He said he understood that the Parole Board was not involved in Khan’s early release and there was no probation service involvement in monitoring him.
He also accused governments of worsening the threat of such attacks and said the “war on terror has manifestly failed.”
Liberal Democrat Foreign Affairs spokesman Chuka Umunna criticized the two main parties for turning the terror attack into a “political football,” saying instead the Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats should all accept at least some blame for creating the current justice system because they have all been in government over the last two decades.
On Saturday, shocked and saddened Londoners found solace in the way bystanders fought to subdue the London Bridge attacker, keeping the death count lower than it would have been if they had fled.
Particularly striking were the weapons they used to confront the killer: a fire extinguisher and a 1.5m narwhal tusk apparently taken from the wall of Fishmongers’ Hall when the attack began.
Remarkable video from the scene shows one man spraying the fire extinguisher at the knife-wielding attacker and trying to hit him with the blunt instrument, while another uses the whale tusk to try to pin the man down.
Others ganged up on the man, wrestling him to the ground and stripping away his weapons.
Additional footage shows another man — said by some media outlets to be a plainclothes policeman — calmly walking away from the scene with one of the attacker’s knives, making sure it could not be used to kill again.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan said the bystanders who brought down the attacker could have followed advice and run away for their own safety, but decided to run toward danger instead.
“We saw Londoners, ordinary citizens, acting in an extraordinary way,” he said.
Some of those who challenged the attacker were former prisoners attending a conference on rehabilitation along with the assailant at Fishmongers’ Hall.
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