The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
May pledges to rip up laws if needed
Big review launched after revelations killers were known to authorities
Theresa May has said she will rip up some human rights laws if they stop her from tackling terrorism.
As the election campaign entered its final hours, the Prime Minister said she would change any laws that got in the way of preventing jihadis waging war on Britain.
Mrs May said: “As we see the threat changing, evolving, becoming a more complex threat, we need to make sure that our police and security and intelligence agencies have the powers they need.
“I mean longer prison sentences for people convicted of terrorist offences. I mean making it easier for the authorities to deport foreign terrorist suspects back to their own countries.
“And I mean doing more to restrict the freedom and the movements of terrorist suspects when we have enough evidence to know they are a threat but not enough evidence to prosecute them in full in court.
“And if our human rights laws stop us from doing it, we will change the laws so we can do it.
“If I am elected as Prime Minister, that work begins on Friday.”
Her pledge comes as security services prepare to launch a review into the atrocity amid mounting questions.
The third attacker has been named as Youssef Zaghba, an Italian national of Moroccan descent, who was living in east London.
He was stopped at Bologna’s airport trying to fly to Turkey in March last year amid concern he was intending to travel on to Syria, according to reports.
Zaghba, 22, is said to have told Italian authorities “I’m going to be a terrorist”, while officers reportedly found Islamic State-related material on his mobile phone when they intercepted him.
He was prevented from continuing his journey to Istanbul, placed on a watch list and flagged to Moroccan and British counterparts, it was claimed.
Italian media said authorities took Zaghba’s phone and passport but they were returned to him as there was insufficient evidence to accuse him of any terror-related offence.
There has been no official comment on the reports from UK authorities but Scotland Yard said Zaghba was not a police or MI5 “subject of interest”.
The latest developments come with counter-terror agencies already facing intense scrutiny after it was revealed another member of the terror gang, Khuram Shazad Butt, 27, had been known to them.
Butt was investigated by officers in 2015 but they found no evidence he was planning an attack and he was “prioritised in the lower echelons of our investigative work”, police said.
Butt, a father-of-two who appeared on Channel 4 documentary The Jihadis Next Door, was also reported to the antiterror hotline in 2015 for showing signs of “extremism or radicalisation”.
Lord Carlile, a former counter-terror laws watchdog, told the Press Association: “I feel a sense of disappointment this morning that the perpetrator Butt slipped off the radar.
“In my view, we need to review what happened in his case and learn the lessons so that the methodology of the response to known suspicions is improved.”
Foreign secretary Boris Johnson acknowledged authorities will face questions.
He told Sky News: “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? What happened? How can he possibly be on a Channel 4 programme and then committing atrocities like this?’.
“And that is a question that will need to be answered by MI5, by the police, as the investigation goes on. “I can’t answer that question now.” Zaghba, Pakistan-born British citizen Butt and Rachid Redouane, 30, who claimed to be Moroccan-Libyan, launched a murderous rampage around London Bridge and Borough Market on Saturday night.
People are going to say ‘how on Earth could we have let this guy and others through the net’