Australian PM Turnbull says Melbourne siege was a ‘terrorist attack’

Italian anti-terror force had informed UK that the third attacker, Youssef Zaghba, was a potential militant

London, June 6: The police named the third attacker in the weekend terror assault in London on Tuesday amid mounting anger over how the jihadist killers had apparently escaped surveillance.

Youssef Zaghba, 22, was an Italian-Moroccan who was arrested last year on suspicion of trying to reach Syria, Italian sources said. The mayor of Valsamoggia, a town near Bologna, said he was registered as an Italian living overseas. Italian news agency AGI said that Zaghba was intercepted at Bologna airport last year as he was about to board a plane for Turkey. Italy’s anti-terrorist force DIGOS believed that he was trying to join ISIS in Syria. Police reportedly found ISIS propaganda videos on his cell phone, but after an investigation, they failed to find sufficient evidence of links to terrorism to justify prosecuting him.

As a holder of an Italian passport, Zagbha was not liable for expulsion under the kind of administrative order Italy routinely uses against suspected Islamist militants from Morocco and Tunisia, and so he was released.

According to AGI, British and Moroccan authorities were notified of Zaghba’s status as a potential militant by DIGOS. Butt “was known to the police and MI5”, but there was no intelligence to suggest that the attack was being planned, the Metropolitan Police said.

Criticism flared about how Butt was able to carry out the attack. He had notably featured in a Channel 4 TV documentary entitled The Jihadis Next Door and, according to the British media, people were alarmed by his views had approached authorities. “Why didn’t they stop TV jihadi?” The Sun asked while The Daily Mirror asked, “So how the hell did he slip through?”

Foreign secretary Boris Johnson acknowledged that security services had to answer. “People are going to look at the front pages today and they are going to say, ‘How on earth could we have let this guy or possibly more through the net?’” Johnson said on Sky News. — AFP

Britain’s Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, and Britain’s Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, talk to staff during a visit to the Royal London Hospital to meet those injured in the London attack on Tuesday. — AFP

Kirsty Boden, a nurse by profession, was one of the seven victims of the London attacks. She had tried to save others.