UK police face questions over London attack as third suspect named
ENGLAND - British police have named the third London attacker as Youssef Zaghba, a Moroccan-Italian who is reported to have been stopped at an airport in Italy on suspicion that he was bound for Syria. London’s Metropolitan Police Service said 22-year-old Zaghba was not a “person of interest” before Saturday’s attack. But media reports in Italy said Italian authorities had alerted their British counterparts about his movements. The Italian newspaper Corriere della Serra said Zaghba was stopped at a Bologna airport in 2016 with a one-way ticket to Istanbul. It was thought he was bound for Syria.
Zaghba’s Syrian connections raise further questions about whether British authorities could have done more to prevent the attack.
Earlier, London police admitted that one of the other two attackers, Khuram Shazad Butt, was on their radar as a member of the outlawed radical Islamist group al-Muhajiroun, co-founded by notorious hate preacher Anjem Choudary. He appeared in a 2016 television documentary called “The Jihadis Next Door.”
Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley said an investigation into Butt had been downgraded as there was no evidence he posed an imminent threat.
The other member of the trio, Rachid Redouane, a 30-yearold who had claimed to be Moroccan and Libyan, was not known to intelligence services.
Seven people died and 48 were injured when the three men rammed a van into pedestrians on London Bridge before launching a stabbing spree in bars and restaurants at nearby Borough Market on Saturday night.
UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said that the country’s intelligence agencies had questions to answer. He told the BBC: “People are going to look at the front pages today and they’re going to say, ‘How on earth could we have let this guy or possibly more through the net?”
Just two days before the UK election, Prime Minister Theresa May has faced a barrage of criticism for cutting 20,000 officers from police forces in her time as Home Secretary. (CNN.com/Photo: CNN.com)