Streatham attacker Sudesh Amman has family in Sri Lanka

A knife-wielding terrorist who was shot dead by police in London on Sunday during a crazed stabbing spree has been named by police as Sudesh Mamoor Faraz Amman, a convicted Islamist terrorist who has extended family in Sri Lanka, the Times of India reported.

The 20-year-old ISIS and al-Qaeda supporter stabbed two people in south London in broad daylight on a busy high street just before 2 pm in what Metropolitan police quickly declared as an “Islamist-related terrorist incident”.

Amman was jailed in December 2018 aged 18 for Islamist-related terrorist offences at the Old Bailey but was released from prison early just days ago. He is thought to have been living in a South London bail hostel when he carried out the attack.

Wearing a fake explosive vest, he stole a £3.99 10-inch kitchen knife from a convenience store and stabbed two people in Streatham High Road, leaving one man, in his 40s, in a life-threatening condition. Plainclothes police officers who had been following him on foot, shot him dead outside Boots pharmacy with handguns, in scenes reminiscent of an action movie, before hordes of armed police arrived.

Next specialist explosives officers and additional armed officers were called in to deal with the device around his body which was found to be a hoax suicide vest.

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Lucy D'Orsi said “The suspect has not yet been formally identified, however, given the circumstance of the incident, we are confident that he was Sudesh Amman, aged 20. Armed officers, who were part of a proactive counter-terrorism surveillance operation and were following the suspect on foot, were in immediate attendance and shot a male suspect dead at the scene. The suspect had been recently released from prison where he had been serving a sentence for Islamist-related terrorism offences.”

Witnesses also spoke of a police car crashing nearby in the rush to get to the scene.

In December 2018 Amman, then an 18-year-old student at North West London College, living in Harrow, had pleaded guilty to 13 counts of possessing and distributing terrorist documents via Skype and was jailed for three years and four months. He had been arrested in May 2018 by armed police.

The Old Bailey heard that he had tried to radicalise his own family, by sharing Al-Qaeda propaganda in a family WhatsApp group, and sharing bomb-making manuals on Skype, exposing his five younger brothers aged 11 to 15, and extended family in Sri Lanka to jihadist material.

After his arrest, police found bomb-making and knife-fighting manuals on his digital devices, as well as ISIS videos depicting graphic violence.

In online messages, he pledged allegiance to Islamic State, said "the Islamic State is here to stay", and said he considered ISIS to “be the best thing to happen to Islam”.

He also spoke about Muslims in London “being massacred” and “put in conditions worse than concentration camps”, and said, “the Quran gave permission to rape Yazidi women”.

In a raid of his home, where he lived with his mother and brothers, police officers found a black flag, a combat knife, and an air gun.

The court heard he had sent beheadings videos to his girlfriend and advised her to kill her "Kafir" (“non-believer”) parents and that he had fantasised about carrying out terror attacks with knives and acid.

The then head of the Met Police counter-terrorism command Acting Commander Alexis Boon said at the time of his conviction: “His fascination with death in the name of terrorism was clear in a notepad we recovered from his home. Amman had scrawled his ‘life goals’ in the notepad and top of the list, above family activities, was dying a martyr and going to ‘Jannah’ - the afterlife.”

The two victims of Sunday’s attack, a man in his 40s and a woman in her 50s, were rushed to South London hospitals. The man, who witnesses said was stabbed in his stomach, was initially in a life-threatening condition. However, by late Sunday night, D'Orsi said “we are thankful that following his treatment at the hospital, this is no longer the case. “

A woman in her 50s, who witnesses said was stabbed in the back, had non-life threatening injuries and has now been discharged from hospital. Another woman in her 20s has minor injuries - believed to have been caused by glass shattering following the discharge of the police firearm. She continues to receive treatment at the hospital.

Man shot dead in london terror attack served prison time