Attacker had Underground access
Job meant terrorist could get to tunnels under Parliament
The family home of London Bridge terrorist Khuram Butt has been raided in Pakistan as it emerged the killer had worked at Westminster tube station and had access to tunnels under Parliament.
Butt, a 27-year-old British citizen born in Pakistan, was one of three men who carried out the assault in which seven people died and dozens more were injured on Sunday.
The second attacker to be named was Rachid Redouane, who claimed to be Moroccan-Libyan.
And late last night British police named the third attacker as 22-yearold Youssef Zaghba, believed to be an Italian national of Moroccan descent.
Police said he was from east London and his family had been told.
Police said Zaghba was not a “subject of interest” to police or the intelligence services.
Twelve people arrested in east London in the wake of the attack have been released without charge.
Meanwhile, it was reported that Butt once worked at Westminster tube station and had access to tunnels under Parliament.
Transport for London confirmed Butt worked for London Underground for just under six months as a trainee customer services assistant, leaving in October last year.
It also emerged Butt was a key contact of 2005 London bomber Mohammed Siddique Khan, and of hate preacher Anjem Choudary.
Top UK counter-terrorism officer Mark Rowley said Butt was known to the security services, but they had no evidence of “attack planning” by him.
The father-of-two, who reportedly appeared on Channel 4 documentary The Jihadis Next Door, was investigated in 2015 but was part of a probe “prioritised in the lower echelons of our investigative work”, Rowley said.
The disclosure means perpetrators in all three of the terrorist attacks in Britain this year had at some point appeared on the radar of authorities.
Butt and Redouane both lived in Barking, east London, and it is not yet known how the two men knew each other — with work to understand more about the trio and their connections still under way.
One of Butt’s neighbours, Ikenna Chigbo, told Reuters he had chatted with Butt — also known as “Abz” — just hours before Sunday’s attack and said he appeared “almost euphoric”.
“He was very sociable, seemed like an ordinary family man. He would always bring his kid out into the lobby,” Chigbo said.
During the eight-minute attack, the three knifemen ploughed into pedestrians on London Bridge using a van then stabbed people in Borough Market with 30cm-long knives.
The attackers, wearing fake suicide vests, were shot dead by eight officers who unleashed a hail of 50 bullets upon them.
Thirty-six people remain in London hospitals, with 18 in critical care.