Reyaad Khan, a British member of Islamic State killed in an RAF drone strike in Syria, posed a “very serious threat to the UK”, according to a long-delayed parliamentary committee report.

But the chairman of the intelligence committee, Dominic Grieve QC, expressed “profound” disappointment at the lack of access to ministerial decision-making material and to other primary evidence that made it impossible to conduct a complete investigation.

Both Theresa May and her predecessor, David Cameron, blocked access to key documents.

The inquiry began in 2015 over concerns about the legality of the attack and whether it had been necessary and proportionate. The attack was unprecedented, the first UK drone strike on a British terrorist target outside of military operations.

The killing drew parallels with a fatal drone attack on a US citizen by the Obama administration that caused controversy in America, where critics described it as an assassination and unconstitutional.

The committee’s role is to scrutinise the work of the UK intelligence agencies.

The drone report is based on 25 intelligence reports and two formal intelligence assessments. It described Khan as a prolific recruiter and attack planner.

Expressing concern about the failure of Downing Street to allow access to crucial material, Grieve said: “This failure to provide what we consider to be relevant documents is profoundly disappointing. Oversight depends on primary evidence: the government should open up the ministerial decision-making process to scrutiny on matters of such seriousness.”

How UK government decided to kill Reyaad Khan Read more

Khan, 21, who was the target of the RAF drone strike on 21 August 2015, travelled to Syria in November 2013 after becoming radicalised. Before that, he had been a straight-A student from the Riverside area of Cardiff who at one point harboured dreams of becoming Britain’s first Asian prime minister.

He featured in a prominent Isis video and was a frequent user of social media, boasting of murders and violent plans. Messages sent by him included: “Executed many prisoners yesterday”, and “Anyone want to sponsor my explosive belt? Gucci, give me a shout.” He posted images of bloody corpses, which Khan said belonged to a group whom he and other militants had captured and executed.

The intelligence committee report was sent to Downing Street in December but publication was delayed. Grieve said he would have challenged some of the redactions in the report, but was having to publish now because of the general election. A new committee will be formed after the election.

The heavily redacted report, UK Lethal Drone Strikes in Syria, concludes: “From the intelligence reports we have seen, we are in no doubt that Reyaad Khan posed a very serious threat to the UK. He orchestrated numerous plots to murder large numbers of UK citizens and those of our allies, as part of a wider terrorist group which considers itself at war with the west.”

The report includes previously unpublished assessments, some of them partially redacted, from the overseas intelligence agency, MI6, the domestic agency, MI5, the surveillance agency, GCHQ, and the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC).

A JTAC assessment sent to ministers in April 2015 said: “A body of reliable and corroborated reporting indicates Khan is currently working with Junaid Hussain to make contact with and task operatives to kill UK and [redacted] individuals.”

Hussein was killed in a US drone strike in Syria.

A JTAC assessment in July sent to UK officials in August 2015 said: “Khan has [made available to] operatives improvised explosive device construction plans and other instructions along with identified targets, [redacted].”

The agencies said he and Hussain were connected to seven plots in the UK that had been stopped.

The committee did not investigate the legality of the drone strike but the nature of the intelligence and issues such as whether Khan posed a threat, whether a threat was imminent and whether the attack was proportionate.

The document that Grieve and other members of the committee expressed most disappointment at being denied was a submission by the agencies in April 2015 to the foreign secretary.

The report says: “Without access to the ministerial submissions, we are not in a position to comment on the process by which ministers considered the question of imminence and how it might have been considered in relation to the decision to conduct a lethal strike.”

In spite of reservations over access to government material, the report concluded: “It is clear to us that Khan was orchestrating and inciting a significant number of attacks, some of which could have been launched within a short period of time.”

A government spokesperson said: “Relevant departments and agencies cooperated fully with the ISC [intelligence and security committee] in its preparation. There will be a formal government response to the committee’s report, in line with the provisions of the Justice and Security Act 2013, in due course.”



Kate Higham, a spokesperson for the human rights organisation Reprieve, said: “David Cameron announced in 2015 that the UK was pursuing a policy of lethal strikes outside of war zones, emulating a failed US model that has killed civilians and done little to make the world safer.

“The former prime minister called this a ‘new departure’ for Britain – and yet, as this report shows, the government continues to block parliament and the public from meaningful debate about it. This lack of oversight over such serious issues is completely unacceptable – ministers must urgently submit the UK’s kill policy to proper public scrutiny.”