Lord of the Dance
Sadiq Khan hits out at Boris Johnson's government over ‘preventable' London terror attack
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Sadiq Khan hits out at Boris Johnson's government over ‘preventable' London terror attack

LONDON MAYOR Sadiq Khan has condemned Boris Johnson’s Conservative government over its failure to prevent a "foreseeable and preventable" terror attack in the capital.

20-year-old Sudesh Amman was shot and killed by armed police after he attacked three passers-by in Streatham, South London, with a large knife.

It has since emerged that Mr Amman was being monitored by undercover police, having been released from prison less than a week earlier, after serving around half of his original three-year-and-four-month sentence for terrorist offences.

Mr Khan hit out at the government for failing to fulfil a previous promise to change the UK’s current anti-terror laws in the wake of the London Bridge terror attack last November in which two people were killed.

The two individuals were stabbed to death by convicted terrorist Usman Khan, who had been released from prison on licence.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme, the London mayor said:

"What makes me angry is we were speaking probably three months ago about the London Bridge attack. In my view, both these attacks were both foreseeable and preventable.

"These were men convicted of terrorist related offences and I have been frustrated for some time about changes to the law in 2012 which took away from judges the power they used to have to give a sentence to protect the public - an indeterminate sentence - and to make sure people weren't released unless we knew they were no longer a danger."

Mr Khan continued: "I'm angry because some of the reassurances we were given by the government in November haven't been realised."

He called on the government to hand the power back to judges to hand out indeterminate sentences to serious offenders and called for a greater provision of resources to stop prisoners from being radicalised while behind bars.