The father of the Streatham terror attacker described his son as a ‘nice calm boy’ and insisted he had no idea ‘he had been radicalised’ in prison.
Faraz Khan said he spoke to Sudesh Amman a day before he was shot dead by police after stabbing two people in a fake suicide vest in south London.
Speaking from Sri Lanka, Mr Khan said he was ‘shocked’ to learn about his son’s violent rampage and revealed he had told him ‘not to be naughty’ during their final phone call.
He said his son would speak to him about religion and Islam but they did not discuss his criminal conviction for spreading extremist material.
He told Sky News: ‘He was reciting the Koran to me and he was translating that to me.
‘He’s never spoken to me about these kind of things. He would never talk to me about naughty things.
‘I heard they found a lot of things and I saw them on the news, but I never thought he would go this far.’
Amman, 20, was killed on Sunday after grabbing a knife from a shop and attacking two bystanders in Streatham High Road. A third person was injured by flying glass during the gunfire.
He had been jailed for possessing and distributing terrorist documents in December 2018 but was freed automatically halfway through his sentence less than a fortnight ago.
He was under police surveillance and had been staying in a nearby hostel before launching his stabbing spree.
Mr Khan said he had nothing bad to say about his son, suggesting he knifed two people because he got ‘angry’.
Hours after he defended his son, a victim who narrowly escaped being killed by the terrorist said she was scared to walk the streets after being caught up in the terrifying ordeal.
The woman, who wanted to be known only as Rosa, said she only escaped unharmed because Amman tried to stab her with a knife still in its plastic packaging.
The 36-year-old said she spent ’20 minutes in hell’ when the Islamic-State supporter started brandishing the knife around.
In an interview translated from Spanish, Rosa, from the Dominican Republic, said: ‘He came in and took a knife and he looked like he was leaving the shop. The owner thought he was going to stop by the cashier to pay.
‘But… he pushed me, he tried to open and remove the plastic packaging from the knife, but he didn’t manage.
‘He pushed and he stabbed me but the knife was still covered with plastic.’
Another of Amman’s victims has been named in reports as teacher Monika Luftner.
In a statement, St Bede’s Catholic Infant & Nursery School in Lambeth said a member of staff was making a ‘good recovery after experiencing a shocking attack’.
The Government is now pressing ahead with plans for emergency laws to keep terrorists behind bars for longer, by ending automatic release halfway through a sentence.
The Streatham attack comes less than two months after convicted terrorist Usman Khan killed two people after being let out of prison early.
There are 224 terrorists in prison in Great Britain, with most thought to be holding Islamist-extremist views, according to the latest published figures to the end of September.
As many as 50 terrorists could be freed from jail this year, figures suggest.
On Monday, Justice Secretary Robert Buckland said emergency legislation was needed to make sure offenders serve two-thirds of their sentence before they are considered eligible for release, at which point their case would be considered by a panel of specialist judges and psychiatrists at the Parole Board.
The new law is expected to be passed by the time Parliament goes into recess on February 13, despite warnings that this could prompt legal challenges from those already serving sentences set under previous rules.
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