Usman Khan, a convicted terrorist, was lawfully killed on London Bridge by armed police after stabbing two people at a prisoner rehabilitation event while wearing a fake suicide belt, an inquest jury has concluded. The 28-year-old jihadi, originally from Stoke-on-Trent, was shot dead by armed officers outside Fishmongers’ Hall in November 2019. Minutes earlier he had killed Saskia Jones, 23, and Jack Merritt, 25, who were helping to organise the event in the hall, hosted by Learning Together, a prisoner education initiative run by Cambridge University. Fellow event delegates, including serving and former prisoners, chased Khan on to the bridge using makeshift weapons, including a narwhal tusk and an ornamental pike. Before armed officers arrived they tried to incapacitate Khan, striking him with a chair, a fire extinguisher and the tusk grabbed from the walls of Fishmongers’ Hall. The inquest heard six officers from the Metropolitan police and City of London police had fired 20 times at Khan, including 18 times in a 90-second period after being sanctioned to carry out a “critical shot” amid fears he was about to detonate his explosive device resulting in mass casualties. Twelve of the 20 bullets hit Khan, and a forensic pathologist gave the cause of death as haemorrhage due to multiple gunshot wounds to the chest and abdomen. After a two-week inquest at the City of London’s Guildhall, half a mile from where Khan died, jurors concluded on Thursday that Khan had been lawfully killed by anonymous police officers. The jurors were directed to return a short-form conclusion of lawful killing by the coroner, Mark Lucraft QC, on the ground that each of the officers who shot Khan believed it was necessary to do so to protect themselves and others. In a longer, narrative conclusion, the jury said that when officers shot Khan dead, they “believed he was trying to find a trigger” on a suicide vest, and that when they opened fire, they feared Khan was moving “to detonate the device”. It said police officers arrived at the scene just before 2.02pm, two minutes after the alarm was raised. The jury’s conclusion said: “They tried to gain control of the situation. They told the public to move away and for Khan to stay still. Khan did not comply and kept on moving.” An officer identified only as XY16 then used his Taser because Khan was not complying, the conclusion said. Another officer, referred to as YX99, then heard Khan say he had a bomb, the jury said. It added: “YX99 felt and saw what he perceived as a viable IED [improvised explosive device] on Khan. He fired two shots into Khan to incapacitate him and reduce the risk to the public still in the area.” It added: “The police then moved slightly farther away to try to gain ballistic cover while clearing the bridge of the public.” Additional armed police arrived and Khan continue to move, the jury concluded. It said: “The police believed Khan was trying to find a trigger. At 14:10:27 Khan sat up, which was interpreted by the police as a move to detonate the device. As a result of this, officers decided to take multiple critical shots to neutralise this risk.” Khan was declared dead at 3.07pm. Last month a separate inquest found that failures by MI5, the police and the probation service in the run-up to the attack all contributed to their deaths of Jones and Merritt.