"Something inside me just went cold," he told Sky News.

Read more: Deaths of Reading terror attack victims 'probably avoidable', inquest finds

The chief executive of the Reading Refugee Support Group had been warning community mental health teams, probation officers and the government's Prevent de-radicalisation programme that Saadallah could carry out a London Bridge-style attack ever since Usman Khan killed two people in a knife rampage in the capital on 19 November 2019.

"I think this tragedy didn't have to happen, it could have been avoided," he said of the Reading attack.

Child soldier

Originally from Tripoli, Saadallah's mother was described as a doctor and his father a successful businessman who "had a lot of money" until he fell out with the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi's regime.

As a teenager, Saadallah was trained to fight as a child soldier for the extremist Islamic militia Ansar al Sharia - banned in the UK as a terror group in 2014 - during the 2011 Arab Spring uprising against Gaddafi's dictatorship.

He came to the UK in 2012 and lived in Manchester where he suffered from mental health problems, became homeless and got involved in a Somali gang, which attacked him with hammers - leaving scars on his head.

After moving to Reading, Saadallah applied for asylum in the UK on the grounds that his life was being threatened in Libya, claiming he had refused to torture people and that a fatwa had been issued against him.

This was later found to be untrue, when police in 2019 recovered a mobile phone he had used to view social media images of himself in Libya as a boy, holding firearms, wearing military fatigues, and showing off bullets arranged into a letter "K" for "Khairi".

'This guy needs help'

Saadallah had been in contact with Mr Harborne's charity for four years before concerns were raised in November 2016 after he told staff he wanted to go back to Libya to fight to avenge the death of his family members.

In one meeting, he barged past Mr Harborne and kicked the door off its hinges before assaulting members of the public and smashing a vodka bottle he had hidden in his jacket to try to stab people.

"He was foaming at the mouth, it was horrible," said Mr Harborne, who described six people holding him down until the police arrived.

"He would've just as much stabbed me as anyone else and that's the point I thought, 'this guy needs help'."

Saadallah was jailed over the incident - he had a string of previous convictions for offences, including violence and possession of a knife, and spent repeated spells in jail between 2015 and 2020.

Mr Harborne said he realised he would likely be in and out of prison and as a "youngster with a traumatic back story" would be vulnerable to radicalisation behind bars.

Prison reports

Saadallah was the subject of dozens of intelligence reports which showed a pattern of fighting, threats to staff, self-harming and suspected drug use, along with references to extremism.

While in Bullingdon jail in 2017, he was observed with extremist Islamist preacher Omar Brooks, also known as Abu Izzadeen - a long-time member of the now banned group al Muhajiroun - in a report that said he "seemed to be an ideal candidate for radicalisation".

He also told prison staff he was a member of Islamic State and wanted to "blow up" Britain, the inquest heard.

De-radicalisation programme

Saadallah was referred to Prevent four times and Mr Harborne said he repeatedly alerted the programme to him after Khan murdered prison rehabilitation workers Jack Merritt, 25, and Saskia Jones, 23, at an event at Fishmongers' Hall in central London.

Mr Harborne was so concerned he even applied to join the Reading Prevent Management team so he could use his position to raise the alarm - but Saadallah was never taken on as a case.

Director of Prevent Michael Stewart said he and his colleagues went to work in the Home Office to stop attacks, adding: "We know that we will not always be able to do so, but that does not make us any less sorry for a case like this."

Police and MI5

Saadallah was "triaged" four times by MI5 between late 2017 and April 2019, the last of which resulted in a "lead" investigation over intelligence he wanted to return to Libya to join ISIS.

But the case was closed two months later after they assessed he was at "low or no risk" of committing terrorist offences.

A senior MI5 manager, referred to as Witness F, told the inquest: "Given the intelligence, no proportionate actions we could have taken would have changed the outcome."

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In June 2019, a counter-intelligence report said there was nothing to suggest he "wishes to commit any terrorism offences" and that he did not "present a counter-terrorism/domestic extremism risk".

Detective sergeant Daniel Spiers, then a counter-terrorism field intelligence officer who was tasked with assessing Saadallah, admitted during the inquest it was a "fair comment" that "this assessment was plainly inadequate".

Further police reporting in July 2019 suggested Saadallah had made comments about ISIS on Facebook but the information was not passed on to MI5, the inquest heard.

The judge coroner said MI5 had "no credible intelligence to suggest KS was planning an attack on the UK" and there was "no realistic possibility of MI5 preventing the attack on Forbury Gardens".

Asylum

By 2018, Saadallah had twice been refused asylum but he was ineligible for deportation to Libya because of the country's civil war and was eventually granted "humanitarian leave" to remain for five years.

The director of the Home Office's Foreign National Offenders Returns Command (FNORC) Jane Sutton said some options were not considered such as deporting him via a third country, and agreed there was "woeful inadequacy" in the way the department dealt with Saadallah in the years leading up to the attack.

Probation

Saadallah was jailed again in October 2019 for more than two years for a string of offences including racially aggravated assault, assaults on police officers and an emergency worker, affray, knife offences and criminal damage.

But the sentence was reduced at the Court of Appeal to 17 months and 20 days in March 2020.

The inquest heard reports about his extremism were not shared with probation officers including Laura Rixon, who told how she struggled to get help for his personality disorder after three different mental health services turned down her approaches.

She broke down in tears while giving evidence as she recalled unknowingly "managing an unconvicted murderer".

She still assessed him to be at "high risk" of attacking unknown men, based on his previous violent offending and, following his release on 5 June 2020, he was considered so violent and unpredictable that he was turned down for accommodation in an "approved premises" designed for very high-risk prisoners.

Katharine Rogers, the counter-terrorism lead officer for the probation service in Thames Valley, said "a very different assessment of the risk" would've been made if they had known the full picture, which may have led to him being recalled to prison when he breached his licence conditions - nine days before the attack.

Knife not found

On 19 June 2020, Saadallah bought the eight-inch kitchen knife he would use to kill history teacher James Furlong, 36, pharmaceuticals manager Joseph Ritchie-Bennett, 39, and scientist David Wails, 49, the following day.

Also on the day before the attack, his brother, Aiman, called police because he feared Saadallah was saying he wanted to "go to heaven" and was going to "blow himself up".

But the information was not passed on to the Thames Valley Police officers who were sent to his council flat for a "welfare visit", not knowing he was on licence.

PC Lewis Perham said Saadallah was acting "shiftily" and positioned himself between the officers and a Morrison's supermarket bag which may have contained the knife, which was not found.

The inquest heard that Saadallah was heard shouting "Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest) and "God accept my jihad" during and after the attack in Forbury Gardens - just 15 days after his release from prison.

Saadallah, now 29, was handed a whole-life sentence at the Old Bailey in January 2021 after pleading guilty to three murders and three attempted murders.

'Shock and utter disappointment'

After the evidence at the inquest had concluded, Mr Furlong's father Gary said: "As we have listened, our shock and utter disappointment at the way these public bodies have functioned has deepened.

"It has deepened to the point that we fundamentally question whether our faith in their combined ability to protect our families was misplaced.

He added: "The individuals tasked with monitoring Saadallah and protecting the public did not have full and accurate information about the risk of harm he posed."