Author Preti Taneja on realising she had taught the Fishmongers’ Hall attacker: ‘We were all unsafe’

Author Preti Taneja on realising she had taught the Fishmongers’ Hall attacker: ‘We were all unsafe’:

It was the day after the London Bridge atrocity that the writer discovered she knew the man responsible. Two years later, she reflects on that time and the fallout that followed

It wasn’t until the morning after the terror attack at Fishmongers’ Hall, London, in 2019, that Preti Taneja realised she knew the perpetrator. Her partner read out his name from a news report over breakfast: Usman Khan. The 28-year-old had taken the creative writing course she led in HMP Whitemoor, a high-security category A prison, two years earlier. The report said he had been shot dead by police, after stabbing five people, two fatally.

Khan had been an enthusiastic student, keen to show off his literary knowledge as well as his writing. When he was released in December 2018, he was encouraged to continue working with the prison education programme Learning Together, which brings students into prisons to learn alongside people who are incarcerated.

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