British police on Tuesday named the third London Bridge attacker as Youssef Zaghba, a 22-year-old Italian of Moroccan descent who lived in East London. Italian intelligence sources told the Corriere della Sera newspaper he was of Moroccan and Italian nationality, with his mother living in the northern Italian city of Bologna.
Reports said Zaghba, who was born in Fez in 1995, attempted to fly to Turkey and travel onwards to Syria in 2016 but was stopped at Bologna airport.
Zaghba was killed in a hail of police gunfire on Saturday after he and two accomplices, Khuram Shazad Butt and Rachid Redouane, mowed down pedestrians in a van on London Bridge and attacked revelers in nearby Borough Market, the WSJ reports.
While police said Zaghba wasn’t a subject of interest to police or MI5, in what appears to be another failure of UK intel services, the Independent reports that Italian intelligence agencies had tipped off authorities in both the UK and Morocco about his movements, it was claimed. After the attempt failed, Zaghba reportedly moved back to Britain and got a temporary job at a restaurant in London.
The Metropolitan Police said it was not in a position to confirm the third man's name, having previously identified attackers Khuram Butt and Rachid Redouane. "Inquiries are ongoing to confirm the identity of their accomplice," said a statement on Monday.
As reported yesterday, Pakistan-born Khuram Butt, 27, and Rachid Radouane, 30, both from Barking were the other two attackers. Meanwhile, another victim has been named as Australian Kirsty Boden, who her family said ran towards London Bridge in an effort to help people, according to the BBC.
"Detectives are particularly keen to hear about places they may have frequented and their movements in the days and hours before the attack." All three men were shot dead by armed police within eight minutes of the first 999 call to Saturday night's attack.
The trio ploughed a hired van into pedestrians on London Bridge before rampaging through bars and pubs surrounding Borough Market stabbing passers-by, killing seven people in injuring dozens more. Butt, 27, was a British citizen who was born in Pakistan and gave his name as Abz Zeitan to acquaintances.
Redouane, 30, formerly lived with his wife and baby daughter in Ireland and had claimed to be Moroccan and Libyan. He also used the name Rachid Elkhdar, claiming to be five years younger.
Khuram Butt, a 27-year-old father of two, had been known to police. A British citizen born in Pakistan, Butt had even appeared in a 2016 documentary called "The Jihadis Next Door," where he was shown praying near an ISIS-style flag. Butt is alleged to have been an associate of convicted British hate preacher Anjem Choudary, but it goes further than that: his neighbors reported him to an anti-terror hotline.
Jibril Palomba, who lives close to Butt's east London home, said he was worried Butt had been radicalizing kids, telling them things like, "If you are not Muslim, you do not follow in the religion of Muslim … you're basically going to hell."
Neighbors described Butt as an avid weightlifter and Transport for London confirmed he worked for London Underground in customer service before leaving last October. In a letter posted outside his gym, the Ummah Fitness Centre said staff would "help the police in any way we can." Counter-terrorism police said Butt had been investigated, but that there was no evidence he was planning a deadly, suicidal assault.
A second named suspect, 30-year-old Rachid Redouane, claimed to be Moroccan and Libyan. He was not on police radar.
London police said all 12 people held since the attack late Saturday from the Barking neighborhood in the east of the city had been freed without charge. A new search was underway Tuesday in Ilford, just north of Barking.
