Streatham terror attacker devoted to ‘sheikh’ who inspired London Bridge killer

February 5, 2020

A jihadi who stabbed two shoppers in Streatham over the weekend was devoted to a notorious ‘Sheikh of hate’ who was booted out of Britain for inciting racial hatred at his south London mosque, it has been revealed – as it’s also found the November London Bridge attacker was also a follower.

The attack, in which Sudesh Amman wore a fake suicide vest in a bid to become a ‘martyr’, had startling similarities to the killing spree carried out by Usman Khan, 28, another former prisoner, who fatally stabbed two Cambridge graduates, Saskia Jones, 23, and Jack Merritt, 25, in a knifing rampage at Fishmongers’ Hall on November 29, 2019.

Both men, according to The Times, had links to Sheikh Abdullah el-Faisal who has been accused of inspiring hundreds of jihadists, including the 7/7 bombers who killed 52 people in London in 2005.

It was found that Khan had el-Faisal’s number in his mobile phone when he was arrested for links to a London Stock Exchange terror attack in December 2010. And it was also found that Amman had texts attributed to el-Faisal when he was arrested while planning his own attack.

The revelation comes after two terrorist sympathizers were convicted in December for spreading the hate speeches of the Islamist preacher. Mohammed Kamali, 31, and Mohammed Abdul Ahad, 38, published sermons given by notorious terror recruiter el-Faisal.

El-Faisal, who had been banned from teaching at Brixton mosque in south London, was jailed by the Old Bailey in 2003 after being convicted of soliciting the murder of non-believers and inciting racial hatred. He was released in 2007 and deported. He is wanted for terrorism offences in the United States and is fighting extradition from Jamaica. The imam was caught in a sting operation by an undercover New York policewoman posing as an aspiring jihadist. He allegedly claimed that he would arrange for one of his British followers to go with her to Syria to join Isis.

While in Belmarsh high-security prison, Amman reportedly told a fellow inmate that he wanted to murder an MP and copy the killing of Jo Cox,

Amman had boasted about trying to join Isis in Syria three days before he was arrested on terrorism charges, a former classmate recalled yesterday. She had met Amman on a bus in Kenton, northwest London, in May 2018.

“I did not recognise him at first due to his changed appearance. . . When he recognised me he told me he had been arrested by the police on multiple occasions and then he just started ranting extremist views very loudly on the bus…” Amman had continued to rant about how important it was to help Isis when he followed her after she got off the bus. “…He told me I was brainwashed by western ideology,”

Other classmates said that Amman took drugs and knives to Park High but had not shown radical tendencies. “He used to do stupid stuff that would impress the popular kids: rolling blunts [cannabis cigarettes] in class, bringing knives to school, that kind of thing.”

The father of the Streatham terrorist has told how his son recited the Koran to him in one of the last conversations they had before the attacker was shot dead. Faraz Khan said that he spoke to Sudesh Amman the day before he lunged at people on Streatham High Road armed with a stolen knife. He said that his son had never given any indication of the attack he was planning. “He’s never spoken to me about these kind of things. He would never talk to me about naughty things,” Mr Khan told Sky News. “I told him not to be naughty, be good, and he listened.”