What lessons can we learn from the case of Khairi Saadallah?

Khairi Saadallah is a name that should not be forgotten in a hurry. Found guilty of the murders of James Furlong, David Wails, and Joe Ritchie-Bennett, Saadallah was yesterday given a whole-life jail term for the June 2020 terrorist attack in Reading’s Forbury Gardens. He will never leave prison. We shouldn’t, though, remember Saadallah’s name because of his crimes, but in order to learn lessons from the catalogue of blunders that left him free to kill.

While the whole-life prison sentence handed is welcome, the case of Khairi Saadallah represents a fundamental failure of epic proportions in the British justice system. Saadallah was previously convicted for a string of knife-related offences and racially-aggravated assault. In October 2019, Saadallah was imprisoned for a collection of non-terror offences (his sentence was subsequently reduced at the Court of Appeal). 

While at HMP Bullingdon, Saadallah was observed by a prison officer to be ‘keen to talk to and associate with’ fellow inmate Omar Brooks (otherwise known as Abu Izzadeen), a radical preacher associated with the proscribed organisation Al-Muhajiroun. A