LONDON ATTACKER
Italian-Moroccan Youssef Zaghba was arrested in Bologna last year as he tried to fly to Syria to join ISIL extremists
Third assailant in van and knife attack that killed 7 people is identified as an Italian-Moroccan,
ROME AND LONDON // The third man identified as one of the London Bridge terrorists was an Italian- Moroccan who was arrested last year on suspicion of trying to reach Syria, Italian sources said yesterday.
Youssef Zaghba, 22, was the son of an Italian mother and a Moroccan father who had separated, and was registered as an Italian living overseas, said Daniele Ruscigno, mayor of Valsamoggia, near Bologna.
“In fact he never lived here. The only member of the family that lived here was the mother, who was known but has not been seen around for some time,” he said. Zaghba was born in Fez and lived mainly in Morocco but had recently spent time working in Britain, most recently at a London restaurant, Italian media reports said.
He was intercepted at Bologna airport last year as he was about to board a plane for Turkey with only a small backpack, his passport and a one-way ticket to Istanbul.
Italy’s anti-terrorist force, Digos, believed he was trying to join ISIL in Syria. His mother was said to have told police last year that he had asked her for money to travel to Rome before he left on his attempted trip to Syria.
Police found ISIL propaganda videos on his mobile phone but failed to find enough proof of links to terrorism to justify prosecuting him.
Zaghba, who held an Italian passport, could not be expelled under the kind of administrative order Italy routinely uses against suspected militants from Morocco and Tunisia, and so he was released.
Digos notified the British and Moroccan authorities of Zaghba’s status as a potential militant. But British police had said Zaghba was “not a police or MI5 subject of interest”.
Outrage is growing in Britain over the news that one of the others linked to the London attack that killed seven people, was a known extremist who had slipped through the net. But authorities admitted yesterday that their hands were often tied in tackling even known threats. Khuram Shazad Butt, 27 and born in Pakistan, was known to the police and MI5, Britain’s domestic intelligence service. He even featured in The Jihadis Next Door, a television documentary.
The other attacker, Rachid Redouane, 30, who claimed he was Moroccan and Libyan, was not known to the British police or intelligence services. Nor was there any intelligence to suggest a plot to attack.
After three attacks in less than three months, police said they could hardly keep tabs on 3,000 people on the terror watch list and 20,000 who have been on the intelligence radar in the past, even with sweeping new surveillance laws, particularly for online communications. Monitoring just one person a day requires about 20 officers.
London police chief Cressida Dick said the recent attacks in Britain, which has claimed 34 lives since March, was “unprecedented in my working life” but risked becoming the new normal.
“We in this country have faced a terrorist threat throughout my life – it changed and morphed and we will change and adapt to what appears to be a new reality for us,” she said.
Ms Dick warned that although police had managed to foil five attacks in recent months, it was possible they were witnessing the start of a wave of copycat assaults by emboldened homegrown radicals.
Otso Iho, senior analyst at IHS Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Centre, said that as ISIL lost territory in Iraq and Syria, it would turn its attention to the West.
“It is seeking to project its influence and maintain its relevance by inspiring, encouraging, and – though there does not appear to be evidence of this in the latest UK plots to date – directing attacks in Europe and elsewhere,” he said.