Assailants were clerk, chef, ‘terrorist’ Italian
LONDON — Details emerged Tuesday of the three London Bridge attackers: a Pakistan-born failed customer service clerk with links to one of Europe’s most prolific hate preachers; a Moroccan pastry chef whose partner said he once went swimming rather than see his daughter; and an Italian man who told authorities he “wanted to be a terrorist.”
At least two of the men were known to British intelligence and law enforcement officials, raising questions about whether anything could have been done to stop the attack, which began Saturday when the men drove a rented van into a crowd and then leaped out to stab people. Seven were killed and nearly 50 wounded. All three of the attackers were shot dead by police.
British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said it was fair to ask how the attackers “slipped through our net.”
Security has become a key issue in the run-up to Thursday’s general election. British security officials said none of the men was considered violent, but they acknowledged the difficulty of predicting whether extremists will turn dangerous. The assault was the third attack in three months in which most of the assailants had been on authorities’ radar at some point.
As the investigation expanded to look at how the men knew one another and whether they were part of a larger conspiracy, Pakistani intelligence authorities swooped Tuesday into the town of Jhelum, where Khurum Butt lived until the time he was 7, when he moved to Britain. His cousin, 18-yearold Bilal Dar, said Butt’s uncle was taken in for questioning.
“This has destroyed our family’s pride,” Dar said.
During his time in Britain, Butt once worked for Transport of London as a customer service clerk but failed his probation after a few months on the job. In his spare time, he tried to recruit followers to the Islamic State — a practice that prompted a neighbor to report him to the police in 2015.
Police identified the second attacker as 30-yearold Rachid Redouane, also known as Rachid Elkhdar, who claimed to have both Moroccan and Libyan roots and worked as a pastry chef in Ireland.
The third attacker was identified as Youssef Zaghba, a 22-year-old Italian national of Moroccan descent who was reportedly working in a London restaurant.
An Italian prosecutor says Zaghba told authorities after being stopped last year at Bologna’s airport that he “wanted to be a terrorist,” but then quickly corrected himself.