THE mother of two women who were murdered last summer by a 19-year-old man says that she has already forgiven their killer, but warned that he could become radicalised while in prison.

A former Archdeacon of Southend, the Ven. Wilhelmina (Mina) Smallman, was reacting to the guilty verdict reached on Tuesday in the case against Danyal Hussein, for the murders of Bibaa Henry, aged 46, and Nicole Smallman, 27, in Fryent Country Park, in north-west London (News, 19 June 2020).

Mrs Smallman spoke about her daughters to the Radio 4 <em>Today</em> programme on Wednesday: “When we hold hatred for someone, it’s not only them who is held captive, it’s you, because your thoughts become consumed by revenge. I refuse to give him that power. He is a nonentity to me.”

Hussein stabbed the two women to death in a random attack in the early hours of 6 June last year. A note found in his grandmother’s house, addressed to a demon and signed in his blood, stated that he planned to kill six women every six months, and in return he expected a lottery win.

The detective who led the investigation, Detective Chief Inspector Simon Harding, said: “I firmly believe he would have carried out his contract. He would have carried on killing women, until he had killed the first six. . . He is a very, very dangerous individual.”

Hussein had been referred to the Government’s counter-extremism Prevent programme for researching far-right material when he was 15, but was discharged after a year. Mrs Smallman said: “If this young man does have this tendency, when he goes into prison he is going to be even more radicalised. He’s a killer now; he’ll be a killing machine by the time he comes out. It’s up to those who assess who is due for release how they are watched and monitored.”