Knife attack suspect was on UK spy radar CHARLOTTE SHOOTING LEAVES 2 DEAD
London, June 22: A Libyan asylum seeker currently in custody in relation to the knife rampage in a British park that killed three people was known to the MI5 intelligence service, UK media reports said on Monday.
Khairi Saadallah, 25, has been arrested under the UK’s Terrorism Act after the deadly incident in a busy park in the southern English city of Reading on Saturday evening was declared a terrorist attack by counter-terror officials.
It has now emerged that the refugee, who arrived in Britain from war-torn Libya in 2012, had been on the radar of security spies as they monitored him for suspected extremist activities. Security sources said that the suspect came to the attention of the security services in 2019 after they received information he had aspirations to travel abroad — potentially for terrorism. “When the information was further investigated, as the first stage of looking into a potential lead, no genuine threat or immediate risk was identified. No case file was opened which would have made him a target for further investigation,” the sources were quoted as saying.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who held discussions with security officials following the attack, said that “if there are lessons that we need to learn about how we handle such cases, then we will learn those lessons”.
Opposition Labour Party leader Keir Starmer has said that “people are united in their grief” following the attack, and that he wants to speak to the prime minister to discuss how to “learn from this”.
Two of the three victims of the terror attack have been identified as 36-yearold school teacher James Furlong and 39-year-old Joe Ritchie-Bennett, an American citizen living in the UK.
Washington, June 22: Two people were killed and seven wounded in a shooting at a block party in the eastern US city of Charlotte, local media reported Monday. Five others were hurt when they were hit by vehicles during the gathering, which was part of extended celebrations over the Juneteenth holiday, which commemorates the end of slavery in the US.