LONDON BRIDGE DEATH TOLL RISES

Xavier Thomas was listed as missing after being on London Bridge on Saturday when the terrorists struck

Police find body of a French national, missing after the Borough Market attack, in the River Thames,

LONDON // Police searching for a Frenchman who has been missing since the London Bridge attack said yesterday they had recovered a body from the Thames. It was found on Tuesday, downstream from the bridge. Although he was not formally identified as Xavier Thomas, the deceased’s next of kin had been informed.

If confirmed, Thomas, 45, would be the eighth person killed in the vehicle and knife attack.

He was walking with his girlfriend over the bridge when the attack began on Saturday night.

Police said that witness accounts suggested he might have been thrown into the river. Thomas’s girlfriend was hit and seriously injured by the van.

Yesterday, police arrested a 30- year- old man in East London in connection with the attack and searched his home. Two men are now in custody on suspicion of breaching the terrorism act. They have not been identified or charged. All others who had been arrested have been released without charge.

The Italian mother of Youseff Zaghba, the third attacker to be identified, said what her son did was “a horrible thing” and vowed to work at educating young people about the true meaning of Islam.

Valeria Collina, a Muslim convert, said she had told Italian airport authorities to detain her son after he was stopped on March 15 last year on his way to Turkey with a one-way ticket.

Ms Collina said her son, whose father is Moroccan, had become radicalised over the past year while living in London.

“When I went to England, he was a bit more rigid, but not so much,” Ms Collina said yesterday. “But from his face, from his look, I could tell there had been a radicalisation, as they say. And this happened in England.”

Britain’s failure to keep tabs on Zaghba despite being warned about him by Italian authorities was understandable, Italy’s top policeman said yesterday.

Zaghba, 22, was identified by the Italian authorities as a potential extremist after he was stopped at Bologna airport in March 2016 on his way to Syria, through Turkey.

They tipped off the authorities in Britain and Morocco about him, but for reasons that are still unclear he was not on the radar of British police and intelligence services before Saturday’s attack.

“We have the record of the notification and our conscience is clear,” said Franco Gabrielli, the chief of Italy’s state police. “But as we are very aware of the responsibilities involved, we understand the distress and difficulties faced by those who have to manage such a complicated situation.”

Mr Gabrielli, who is also in charge of Italy’s department of public security, said investigators had found material from extremist websites on Zaghba’s mobile phone. That was enough to warrant the warning to Britain and Morocco, but not to take further action against him, he said. “We can’t charge people simply because they visit certain internet sites,” he said.

“The possibility of forging links, exchanging ideas and discussing causes, these are some of our fundamental freedoms.”

British intelligence agencies also knew about Khuram Shazam Butt’s extremist views. He had appeared in a TV documentary about extremists titled The Jihadis Next Door.

Reaction to the attack has dominated the final days of campaigning before today’s general election, with opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and others criticising prime minister Theresa May for cutting police numbers by about 20,000 during her tenure as home secretary.