The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for a London stabbing attack that wounded two and ended in the shooting death of the attacker.
Sudesh Amman, 20, was shot dead by police after he strapped a fake explosive device to himself and stabbed two people on a busy street in south London on Sunday. ISIS claimed that he was one of their “fighters.”
“The perpetrator of the attack in the Streatham area south of London yesterday was an Islamic State fighter, and he carried out the attack in response to calls to target the citizens of the [international anti-ISIS] coalition states,” the terrorist group’s official media outlet said, according to a translation provided to the Washington Examiner.
The term “fighter” is often used by ISIS’s media wing to refer to those who were inspired by ISIS to attack targets in the West rather than being in direct coordination with the terrorist organization.
Amman had just been released from prison when he launched the attack. He was jailed in 2018 after he admitted to more than a dozen terrorism-related offenses and was sentenced to three years and four months in prison. Amman was released about a week ago after serving just half of his sentence.
A day after the knife attack, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson pledged to reduce opportunities for the early release of people convicted of terrorism charges.
In a similar November case, former inmate Usman Khan killed two people and wounded three others in a stabbing attack near London Bridge. He was also shot and killed by police. Johnson said Monday that early releases would come under scrutiny.
“I think the idea of automatic early release for people who obviously continue to pose a threat to the public has come to the end of its useful life,” Johnson said. “We do think it’s time to take action to ensure that people, irrespective of the law that we’re bringing in, people in the current stream do not qualify automatically for early release.”
