London killers revealed
THE ringleader of the London Bridge attack was a British citizen on a terror watchlist who had previously appeared in a TV documentary called The Jihadis Next Door.
Police named two of the three men who murdered seven people and injured 48 more in a van and knife rampage through London Bridge and the Borough Market on Saturday night.
A number of people are still missing, including Queensland’s Sara Zelenak, 21, and South Australia’s Kirsty Boden.
As thousands gathered for a vigil on the banks of the Thames, police revealed one of the terrorists was Pakistani-born UK citizen Khuram Shazad Butt, 27, who was photographed dying on the ground wearing a hoax suicide vest made of canisters over an Arsenal football shirt.
Known as “Abz”, he had been under investigation for his extremist views by MI5 and police but had been given a low investigation priority because police had no evidence he was planning an attack.
The second terrorist was Moroccan-born Rachid Redouane, 30, who also went by the name of Rachid Elkhdar and claimed to be six years younger.
Redouane, a pastry chef who was separated from his Scottish wife, had been unknown to police.
He was carrying an Irish identification card indicating he has residency rights and had lived in Rathmines, south Dublin, for a period of time.
The third terrorist is understood to be a foreign national. He has not been named as police wait for international confirmation.
Confirmation Butt was a wellknown jihadi who was on a terror watchlist is hugely damaging to the security agencies, who have already admitted the men who committed two previous attacks in the UK in the past three months, Khalid Masood and Salman Abedi, had also been known to authorities prior to their attacks.
Both Butt and Redouane lived in Barking in east London. It is not clear how the three knew each other. Islamic State claimed they were part of a jihadist sleeper cell.
Butt, who was married with two children, appeared in a Channel 4 documentary titled The Jihadis Next Door, in which an Islamic State flag was unfurled in a park, and one of his associates was filmed laughing as Islamic State drowned men in a cage.
A former employee at KFC and the London Underground, he had twice been reported to authorities for his extremist views.
He was involved in a verbal altercation with police after he unfurled an Islamic State flag in London’s Regent’s Park.
The UK’s top anti-terror police officer, Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, said there was no evidence Butt had been “attack planning” so he had been deemed to be a low priority.
MI5 has 23,000 people subjects of interest, of which 3000 – including Butt – are under active investigation.
“There was no intelligence to suggest that this attack was being planned and the investigation had been prioritised accordingly,” Mr Rowley said.
He conceded police needed a complete chance of strategy in their fight against Islamist terror.
“In nine weeks, we’ve had five plots foiled and three successful attacks,” he said.
“That is completely different to anything we have seen for a long time.”
Police have now released without charge all 12 of the people arrested in raids at Barking on Sunday, including the wives of both the attackers.
As police continued to try to identify all of the dead and injured from the Saturday atrocity, the Muslim Council of Britain revealed more than 130 imams and religious leaders had refused to perform the funeral prayers for the attackers.
The condition of some of the 21 people who were critically injured has improved, with the NHS saying 18 people now remained in critical care.
Two of the dead have been identified – Canadian woman Christian Archibald, 30, and London businessman, James McMullen, 32 – and the French Government said one of its citizens was also deceased.