PRESSURE was mounting on the Government and the security services last night following claims that Italian authorities had warned the UK about the third London Bridge attacker.
Italian national Youssef Zaghba, who was identified yesterday, was stopped at Bologna airport in March last year over concerns that he was heading for Syria, according to reports in Italian media.
Zaghba, who is of Moroccan descent, was scheduled to travel to Turkey but is said to have told officers who intercepted him that he was “going to be a terrorist”.
Daesh-related material was found on his phone and he was stopped from flying to Istanbul, placed on a watch list and flagged to both Moroccan and British authorities, it is claimed. However, reports said his phone and passport were returned as there was insufficient evidence to accuse him of terror-related offences.
Scotland Yard said Zaghba, from East London, had not been a police or MI5 “subject of interest”
and UK security services said they had received no direct intelligence on the attacker from Italian authorities.
An Italian diplomatic source told The Guardian that information on Zaghba had been added to a European database as a person at risk of radicalisation.
The revelations come after it emerged fellow attacker Khuram Shazad Butt, 27, had been investigated in 2015, but was “prioritised in the lower echelons” of police work over a lack of evidence that an attack was planned.
The disclosures mean perpetrators in all three of the terrorist outrages to hit Britain this year had at some point appeared on the radar of security agencies.
Yesterday Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said: “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?’.
“That is a question that will need to be answered by MI5, by the police, as the investigation goes on.”
Later, Prime Minister Theresa May, who has been criticised for overseeing cuts to English police numbers during her time as Home Secretary, said a review should be held.
She said: “MI5 and the police have already said they would be reviewing how they dealt with Manchester and I would expect them to do exactly the same in relation to London Bridge.”
However, in an interview with Sky News, she refused to say whether Johnson was right to say the public would be questioning how the men were missed, or whether she should bear any responsibility.
May said: “What government needs to do is, and what the government that comes in after Thursday’s election needs to be willing to do, is to give more powers to the police and security service when they need them, needs to deal with this issue of terrorism and extremism online and also needs to be able to call out extremism here in the United Kingdom.”
Arsenal fan Butt, who appeared on a Channel 4 documentary, had been reported to the anti-terror hotline in 2015 over signs of “extremism or radicalisation”.
Yesterday the anti-radicalisation Quilliam Foundation said it too had reported Butt after he became involved in a “violent scuffle” with its researcher Dr Usama Hasan at an Eid event last July. It claimed it was told that Butt “was already known to intelligence”.
However, the second man, Rachid Redouane, a pastry chef who had been living in Ireland until recently, had not come to the authorities’ attention.
Lord Carlile, a former counter-terror laws watchdog, said: “I feel a sense of disappointment this morning that the perpetrator Butt slipped off the radar.
“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.”
A minute’s silence was held in tribute to the victims of Saturday night’s attack, which killed seven and injured dozens more.
Last night 15 people remained in a critical condition and Australian nurse Kirsty Boden was named as the third fatality. Her family said: “As she ran towards danger, in an effort to help people on the bridge, Kirsty sadly lost her life.
“We are so proud of Kirsty’s brave actions which demonstrate how selfless, caring and heroic she was, not only on that night, but throughout all of her life.”
Canadian national Chrissy Archibald, 30, was the first victim identified. She was struck by the attackers’ van and died in her fiance’s arms.
Relatives of 32-year-old James McMullan, from London, believe he is among the dead and it is understood a French national was also killed.
Daesh claimed its “fighters” carried out the atrocity and 12 of the 13 people arrested during the investigation have been released without charge.
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