Knife killer we couldn’t have kept out even if we wanted
EU freedom of movement forced us to let him in ... and there are 100 more like him
A FRESH borders row erupted last night after it emerged that EU rules meant Britain could not have stopped one of the London Bridge killers coming into the country.
Youssef Zaghba, 22, was flagged on an international watchlist by the Italian authorities, who also told MI6 that he had tried to travel to Syria.
A Brussels diktat stating that EU citizens can only be turned away if there is a ‘genuine, present and serious’ threat meant border guards could not stop him entering the UK at least twice after being put on the watchlist.
Just over a year after the Islamist was placed under round-the- clock surveillance by Italian counter-terror officers, he was part of the gang that murdered eight in a van and knife rampage around London Bridge on Saturday night.
Former justice minister Dominic Raab, a Conservative candidate, said: ‘Perverse EU rules stop us from barring terrorists and extremists unless they pose a serious and present danger. Even then they have to be given reasons. The rules are crazy.’
As it emerged that there are more than 100 other Italians on the watchlist living in the UK, Zaghba’s mother also expressed disbelief that her son was not put under surveillance by British police.
Valeria Collina told the Daily Mail how her son was questioned by Italian police when he visited her in Bologna.
Speaking from her apartment on the outskirts of Bologna, the 68-year-old Italian Muslim convert said: ‘When he came to Italy to visit me the police would be waiting on the tarmac at the steps of the plane. They would talk to him and even escort him back to the house to see what he was up to. But Youssef never mentioned anything like that happening in England.’
Over the last decade, British officials have turned away 11,000 EU nationals.
Yet at the same time, 200,000 non-EU nationals have been refused entry to the UK. This is despite 75 per cent of the 330million visitors to the UK since 2006 being from within the EU.
Under UK law, a person from outside the EU can be stopped from entering the country on the grounds that their presence here is ‘not conducive to the public good’.
However, Brussels rules state that EU citizens can only be blocked if they meet the far higher threshold that they represent a ‘genuine, present and serious’ threat.
Concerns were also raised about flaws in the much-vaunted EU-wide database.
Zaghba was placed on the Second Generation Schengen Information System, known as SIS II, which has details of 855,000 wanted or missing people.
The system issues alerts about the
most dangerous fugitives as well as suspected jihadists returning from Syria and Iraq.
The Italian police acted after Zaghba told the authorities, ‘I’m going to be a terrorist,’ when he was reportedly stopped trying to travel to Syria in March 2016.
Jihadist propaganda, including beheading videos and an Islamic State flag, was discovered on his phone but a court decided there was insufficient evidence to prosecute him.
When he arrived at Stansted Airport in Essex a month later, he was allowed into the country despite the database flagging him up as a criminal.
Zaghba, who lived in Ilford, East London, was also questioned at the airport in January 2017 – but let in under EU freedom of movement rules.
Labour candidate Yvette Cooper, chairman of the Commons’ home affairs select committee in the last Parliament, said: ‘There are serious questions for the Home Office.’
Italy’s anti-terror prosecutor Franco Roberti said the authorities sent an intelligence file to MI6 after Zaghba first travelled to the UK. Chief of police Franco Gabri- elli told a press conference yesterday: ‘On London our conscience is clean, the records will prove it.’
Italian security sources revealed that Britain is home to at least 100 other Italians who have been flagged as posing a potential terrorist risk on the SIS II database.
Counter-terror agencies in the UK are already under intense scrutiny after it was revealed Zaghba’s fellow killers Khuram Butt, 27, and Rachid Redouane, 30, were also known to security services.
Zaghba was born in Morocco and raised as a Muslim, but his views became more extreme after his parents separated and his mother moved back to Italy.
His Moroccan father Mohammed Zaghba is said to have forced him to recite verses from the Koran.
But it was only when Zaghba moved to East London in 2015 that his mother became concerned about his behaviour.
Mrs Collina said: ‘I blame the internet for his radicalisation. It started in Morocco with videos he was watching and then on the internet in London.’
The Home Office has not commented as there is an ongoing police investigation, while Scotland Yard has said Zaghba was not a police or MI5 subject of interest.