The Streatham terror attack may have been prevented had home-grown jihadi Sudesh Amman been recalled to prison before he struck, an inquest jury has concluded.

       The 20-year-old was shot by two police marksmen after he stole a 20cm knife from a shop in Streatham High Road on February 2 2020 and stabbed two bystanders while wearing a fake suicide vest.

       His attack was brought to a halt when armed undercover police tailing him opened fire, shooting at him six times and hitting him twice at close range.

       Amman had been described by senior police and MI5 officers as "one of the most dangerous individuals that we have investigated" just two weeks before he was freed from prison.

       Police and MI5 were so concerned about Amman two days before the atrocity that they held an emergency meeting to discuss the prospect of arresting him.

       But HM Prison and Probation Service decided not to recall him to prison, despite undercover officers spotting him buy four small bottles of Irn-Bru, kitchen foil and parcel tape from Poundland on January 31 - items they rightly feared could be used to make a hoax suicide belt.

       Amman was kept under round-the-clock armed surveillance instead.

       Detective Assistant Commissioner Dean Haydon, senior national co-ordinator for counter-terrorism policing, said: "I want to reassure everybody that we work around the clock tirelessly with great determination and effort to combat any forms of terrorist activity in this country."

       Intelligence compiled on 20-year-old Amman, both in the build-up to his conviction and in the days before his release from Belmarsh prison, painted a picture of a young man bent on radicalisation and committing a crime.

       His inquest heard he expressed a desire to kill the Queen, and remarked his wish to have been involved in the 2013 murder of fusilier Lee Rigby outside Woolwich barracks.

       He was also seemingly obsessed with his own celebrity, apparently boasting to cellmates that he was Belmarsh's youngest terror offender.

       Amman had been released from Belmarsh prison only 10 days before he carried out the stabbings, after serving part of a 40-month sentence for terror offences, despite pleas from police and MI5 to detain him for longer over concerns that he remained a danger to the public.

       Shortly before his release, prison officers found a pledge of allegiance to Islamic State and were informed that he told fellow inmates: "I'm not finished with these non-believers yet."

       The inquest jury at the Royal Courts of Justice returned a conclusion of lawful killing, after retiring for 11 hours to consider their finding, but said the probation service "missed an opportunity" to send him back to prison following his purchase of the materials for the fake suicide belt.