An expert has given her views after a coroner ruled yesterday Friday April 26 that the Reading terror attacks in which three men were murdered in a park were “probably avoidable” and contributed to by the failings of multiple agencies.

Professor Harmonie Toros is a Professor in Politics and International Relations at the University of Reading. Her areas of research interest include terrorism, political violence, and the human experience of war.

“The inquest really did highlight the failings of the public services,” she said.

“The coroner stressed particularly concerns about the mental health provision and counter-terrorism policing and the probation services as well.

“He was very clear that this was avoidable. Obviously, the question is avoidable how and what we have to do to minimise the risk of this kind of violence happening again.”

Libyan refugee Khairi Saadallah shouted “Allahu akhbar” as he fatally stabbed friends James Furlong, 36, Dr David Wails, 49, and Joseph Ritchie-Bennett, 39, on June 20 2020 in the town’s Forbury Gardens.

The “failings of the state exposed by this inquest sicken and disgust me”, Said Dr David Wails’s brother Andrew Wails following the ruling.

Gary Furlong, the father of James Furlong, said the three victims had been failed by “virtually all state agencies” who dealt with their attacker.

“On the mental health side, it’s primarily a question of lack of funding,” Professor Toros said. “Mental health in the UK is terribly under-resourced and a lot of people fall through the cracks.

“There’s a real question there that needs to be addressed in terms of resources.”

Professor Toros also said regarding counter-terrorism policing, the 2015 broadening of responsibility for this issue to professionals such as social workers and nurses has had detrimental results. 

“The ‘Prevent’ duty became everybody’s duty to check if someone was being radicalized. Most professionals are simply not trained to do this. 

“A social worker is a social worker, they have to check that someone is not at risk but they're not trained to check if someone is a terrorism risk. The same is true for a nurse, a teacher, and so on.”

She said that what she found particularly striking in the inquest was that the very people whose job it is to monitor and prevent terrorist attacks claimed that they were not properly trained. 

“The counter-terrorism police officer described his own training as ‘rather crude and lacking in detail.’

“I think there has been a problem of approach to counter-terrorism in the UK where we have spread it way beyond the scope of people who are supposed to be doing it at the expense of training this group properly.”