This is the first picture of the nursery school teacher who was stabbed in Sunday’s Streatham terrorist attack as she cycled home from coffee with friends.
Monika Luftner, 51, was ‘extremely lucky’ to be alive after recently freed terrorist Sudesh Amman, 20, knifed her in the back as she left a cafe.
The married mother-of-one’s husband was too distraught to talk when approached at the family home close to Streatham today, saying simply: ‘I can confirm that my wife is the woman who was stabbed.’
Mrs Luftner was one of two passers-by stabbed by Amman during a horrific one-minute rampage on the busy south London High Street.
Amman, who was wearing a fake suicide vest and being trailed by a five-strong police surveillance team, stole a 10-inch knife from a shop before stabbing people.
He was shot dead 60 seconds later.
He had been released early from Belmarsh prison in south-east London two days before the attack, where he had boasted to fellow inmates about his plans to ‘take out an MP’.
It was the second terror attack in the capital in three months after Usman Khan killed two on London Bridge.
The fresh bloodshed sparked a row today over the automatic early release of jihadis from jails – which sees extremists automatically freed after serving half their sentences under laws passed by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s Labour governments .
Both Amman and Khan launched their stabbing sprees after being automatically released from prison without going in front of a parole board.
At least 18 terrorists are due to be released automatically from prison in the coming months, including convicted bomb-makers and ISIS fighters.
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Monika Luftner, 51, was ‘extremely lucky’ to be alive after Sudesh Amman, 20, knifed her in the back, friends said
The popular primary school teacher riding her bike (left) which was pictured at the scene of the terror attack on Sunday evening
Amman (pictured left and right as a child), 20, was being monitored by the security services on Sunday when he stole a knife from a hardware store and went on the rampage in Streatham
Boris Johnson is this week racing to close the loophole and hope to have a new law keeping all dangerous terrorists in prison in place within 10 days.
But even if the PM succeeds in passing the legislation, he faces a major court battle over his bid to keep terrorists in prison because human rights lawyers will try and overturn the measures in court arguing that it is unfair to change the terms of individuals’ sentences retrospectively.
Home Secretary Priti Patel today defended the government’s failure to close a loophole that sees terrorists automatically released from prison after serving half of their sentences.
She told This Morning: ‘We’ve been working on this for 6 months, I’ve been Home Secretary for 6 months and it wasn’t until the incident with Usman Khan, which was Fishmongers Hall, wargaqq that is when we announced that we would bring in new legislation through a Counter Terrorism Bill.
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