The three people believed to be involved in the attack in London on June 3rd have been named by police as Khuram Butt, Rachid Redouane and Youssef Zaghba. But who were they?
Khuram Butt, a 27-year-old British citizen who was born in Pakistan, was known to the police and MI5 and was the subject of an investigation in 2015.
He is alleged to have been an associate of the hate preacher Anjem Choudary and appeared in a 2016 Channel 4 documentary about British Islamic extremists, The Jihadis Next Door.
The former London Underground worker was once thrown out of a mosque for interrupting an imam’s sermon and verbally attacked an anti-extremism campaigner.
Mohammed Shafiq, chief executive of the Ramadhan Foundation, said Butt called him a “Murtad” — traitor in Arabic — when he confronted Choudary about his support of terrorism days after the murder of Lee Rigby in 2013.
The Jabir Bin Zayid Islamic Centre, where Butt occasionally worshipped, said that “some years ago after interrupting a Friday sermon he was asked to leave the mosque”.
Residents at a block of flats in Barking — where a number of arrests were made on Sunday — said they recognised the attacker and that he had lived in the area for around three years. He was known locally as “Abs/z” and was identified by neighbours as the terrorist in a photo.Butt was father to a toddler and baby and a keen gym-goer and weightlifter, neighbours said.
Butt was reported to anti-terror police over fears he was attempting to radicalise schoolchildren, according to reports.
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Rachid Redouane was a 30-year-old Moroccan-Libyan pastry chef who had until recently been living in Dublin.
He is thought to have settled in Dublin about five years ago but does not appear to have come to the authorities’ notice before Saturday night’s terror attack.
He is thought to have been identified from a card that was found on his body that had been issued by the Garda National Immigration Bureau in Dublin.
Irish security sources confirmed the terrorist married a British woman in Dublin in 2012 and lived in Rathmines, Dublin.
He returned to Ireland again in 2015, again for an unknown length of time. He appeared to have spent time in Ireland as recently as three months ago.
Read more: Who was Rachid Redouan?
The final attacker was named as Youssef Zaghba, a 22-year-old Italian national of Moroccan descent and lived in east London.
Police said Zaghba had not been a subject of interest for them or for the MI5 domestic intelligence agency.
Zaghba’s mother lives in the northern Italian city of Bologna and he had broken off relations with his Moroccan father, the source said. After a period living together in Morocco, Zaghba’s parents separated and the mother returned to Italy.
Zaghba visited his mother at her home near Bologna several times and in March 2016, after being stopped at Bologna airport, he was investigated for possible international terrorist activity but released.
However, Italy put him on a list of people considered “at risk,” and informed both British and Moroccan authorities of his movements.
At the time of the attack he was working in a London restaurant and continued to have contacts with his mother in Italy, which he visited last year.
[ Who was Youssef Zaghba?Opens in new window ]
Reuters, Guardian