- Thursday, April 25, 2024
By: Radhakrishna N S
GRAFFITI supporting British Asian who was involved in the London Bridge terrorist attack last month has been found in his hometown.
Stoke-on-Trent in central England was the hometown of Usman Khan, 28, a media report said.
According to The Sunday Times, it discovered the graffiti which reads “Usman Khan Call 4 Justice” last week as part of a probe into the criminal’s background and others.
Tagged with the letters “COB”, the graffiti is believed to refer to a local gang calling themselves the Cobridge Boys.
The rundown area is home to a large Pakistani community.
Khan was shot dead by police officers after he went on a knife rampage on November 29, killing two people.
He grew up in Cobridge area of Stoke-on-Trent.
The body of Khan was reportedly secretly flown back to his family’s ancestral village of Kajlani in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK).
“I condemn their actions,” Mohammed Pervez, leader of Stoke’s Labour party group in the area, told the newspaper.
“The graffiti will be offensive to the family of Usman Khan and to the wider community,” he added.
The relatives of the killer have already issued a statement denouncing his act and expressing condolences to the victims’ families.
Earlier, Khan was arrested with two others from Stoke as part of a nine-member Al Qaeda plot to blow up the London Stock Exchange.
They also had plans to set up a terrorist training factory in the guise of a madrassa on land owned by Khan’s family in PoK.
The South Asian-origin man was later jailed indefinitely for public protection in 2012. However, this was replaced by a 16-year sentence on appeal, and he was freed last year.
Khan had also discussed organising a Mumbai-style attack on the British Parliament.
He was described by the judge who sentenced him for terrorism offences in 2012 as an ongoing risk to the public with a “serious, long term venture in terrorism”.
The profile of Khan dating back to his conviction in 2012 reveals his links with Islamist terrorism.
He had been secretly recorded talking about plans to recruit British radicals to train at a camp in PoK.
