Khairi Saadallah (born 1995) was a Libyan asylum seeker in Britain who, on 20 June 2020, killed 3 and injured 3 in a stabbing attack in Reading, Berkshire, England. He first drew MI5's intelligence in 2019 as a suspected Islamic extremist (despite his apparent earlier conversion to Baptist Christianity), and he had been known to have previous mental health issues.
Biography[]
Khairi Saadallah was born in Libya in 1995, and he emigrated to the United Kingdom in 2012 to flee the Second Libyan Civil War, living first in Greater Manchester. He was convicted six times for 15 crimes between 2015 and 2019, and, while he volunteered at a Baptist church from June to September 2018 and was said to have converted to Christianity, he came to the attention of MI5 in 2019 over intelligence that he aspired to travel for extremist and jihadist purposes. He was released from jail on 3 June after being sentenced for possessing a bladed article and for assault, and he had been known to have mental health problems. On 22 June, police were granted a warrant of further detention with regard to the suspect until 27 June, but, that same day, Saadallah attacked two groups of people socializing in the Forbury Gardens public park in Reading with a five-inch blade. He killed 3 and wounded 3 in random stabbings, and he was eventually tackled and pinned to the ground by policemen at Friar Street, and he was rearrested while under custody under Section 41 of the Terrorism Act 2000. On 10 July 2020, he was in custody at the Old Bailey, London. On January 11, 2021, he was given a life sentence for the attack.