London – Britain's Boris Johnson said on Sunday he
had ordered the security services to step up monitoring of convicted terrorists
released early from prison, prompting accusations that he was exploiting the
London Bridge attack for political gain less than two weeks before elections.
The prime minister revealed officials were
scrutinising around 74 people with terrorist convictions who had been released
early from prison like Usman Khan, who left jail last December and went on to
stab two people to death in Friday's rampage.
"They are being properly invigilated to make
sure there is no threat," Johnson told the BBC. "We've taken a lot of
action as you can imagine in the last 48 hours."
Under the review of released terror convicts,
police in the West Midlands said they had arrested a 34-year-old man "on
suspicion of preparation of terrorist acts".
British media said he was a former associate of the
London Bridge attacker and had been jailed alongside Khan in 2012 over a plot
to bomb the London Stock Exchange.
Police said, however, there was no information to
suggest a link to Friday's attack.
Khan, 28, was shot dead wearing a fake explosives
vest by police on London Bridge after a stabbing spree launched in a nearby
hall hosting an ex-offenders' event that also left three people injured.
Police on Sunday formally named the two victims
killed as Jack Merritt, 25, from Cambridgeshire in eastern England, and
23-year-old Saskia Jones of Warwickshire in the West Midlands.
PM vows to stiffen sentences
Johnson blamed the previous Labour government for
changing the law in 2008 to allow for the early release of prisoners and vowed
to introduce minimum 14-year sentences if he regains power in the December 12
vote.
He penned an article setting out the new stance in
The Mail on Sunday newspaper, under the headline: "Give me a majority and
I'll keep you safe from terror".
Critics hit out at him for appearing to politicise
Friday's attack – including the family of victim Jack Merritt, who said he died
"doing what he loved".
While Johnson has vowed to stiffen sentences
following the attack, Merritt's family said their son "believed in
redemption and rehabilitation, not revenge" and that "he always took
the side of the underdog".
"We know Jack would not want this terrible,
isolated incident to be used as a pretext by the government for introducing
even more draconian sentences on prisoners, or for detaining people in prison
for longer than necessary," they said in a statement.
Merritt was a course coordinator at Cambridge
University's criminology institute, which was hosting its event by London
Bridge to mark five years of its prisoner rehabilitation programme.
Khan, a participant in the initiative during his
imprisonment, attended the event armed with two knives, stabbing five people
there.
Meanwhile, hospital officials said one of the
injured had returned home, while the two others remained hospitalised in a
stable condition.
Members of the public have been hailed as heroes
for preventing even greater loss of life by tackling Khan – one armed with a 1.5m
long narwhal tusk, and another with a fire extinguisher.
The incident came two years after Islamist
extremists in a van ploughed into pedestrians on London Bridge before attacking
people at random with knives, killing eight people and wounding 48.
'Knee jerk reactions'
After searching two properties on Saturday in
central England, believed to be linked to Khan, police have said they believe
he was acting alone and were not seeking anybody else.
But the Islamic State (ISIS) group has released a
statement claiming responsibility for the attack.
Khan, a British national, had been handed an
indeterminate sentence for the protection of the public in 2012, of at least
eight years in prison.
He was part of an eight-man network inspired by
Al-Qaeda, which had plotted to bomb targets including the London Stock
Exchange, and planned to take part in "terrorist training" in
Pakistan.
But his sentence was quashed by the Court of Appeal
in 2013, and he received a new 21-year term, comprising a custodial sentence of
16 years and five years on conditional release.
He was then conditionally released from jail around
a year ago under so-called licensing conditions after serving about half of his
jail term.
Responding to the political furore around the
attack, Merritt's father David said: "We don't need knee-jerk reactions".
"It's not lenient policies that are to blame,
it's the destruction of the probation service that is supposed to monitor and
supervise prisoners after release, & rehabilitation services," he said
on Twitter.
That is also the view of the main opposition Labour
Party, which noted that the Conservatives have been in power for nearly a
decade but had chosen not to tighten the laws around terrorism sentencing.
"I think there has to be an examination of how
our prison services work and crucially what happens to them on release from
prison," Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn told Sky News.
