by Richard INGHAM
Agence France-Presse
LONDON, United Kingdom – Police on Tuesday identified the third attacker in the weekend terror assault in London amid mounting anger, two days before an election, over how the jihadist killers had apparently escaped surveillance.
With flags at half-mast, Britain fell silent at 11:00 am to remember the seven killed and dozens injured on Saturday — a mourning ritual now grimly familiar after two previous attacks in less than three months.
Police identified the third attacker as Youssef Zaghba, a 22-year-old Italian national of Moroccan descent, a day after naming his accomplices as Khuram Shazad Butt, 27, a Pakistan-born Briton, and Rachid Redouane, 30, a self-described Moroccan-Libyan dual national.
Police also said they had made an overnight raid in east London and arrested a 27-year-old man early Tuesday. Twelve people arrested earlier have since been released.
Butt “was known to the police and MI5”, the domestic security service, but there was no intelligence to suggest the attack was being planned, the Metropolitan Police said.
Zaghba was “not a police or MI5 subject of interest,” it added.
But an Italian prosecutor said Zaghba was notified to Britain as a “possible suspect” back in March 2016.
Bologna prosecutor Giuseppe Amato said the warning had been transmitted after Zaghba was intercepted at the city’s airport trying to board a plane for Turkey, en route for Syria.
Criticism immediately flared about how Butt was able to carry out the attack.
He had notably featured in a Channel 4 television documentary entitled “The Jihadis Next Door” and, according to the British media, numerous people alarmed by his views had gone to the authorities.
The London attack follows the May 22 suicide bombing at the Manchester Arena by Salman Abedi — killing 22 people, including children — who was also known to British intelligence services.
“Why didn’t they stop TV jihadi?” The Sun asked on its front page, while the Daily Mirror demanded: “So how the hell did he slip through?”
The Daily Telegraph added: “It is astonishing that people who pose such a danger to life and limb should be able to parade their foul ideology on TV with no consequences.”
May under pressure
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson acknowledged the security services had to provide answers.
“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? What happened? How can he possibly be on a Channel 4 programme and then committing atrocities like this?’,” Johnson said on Sky News television.
“That is a question that will need to be answered by MI5, by the police, as the investigation goes on,” he said.
Prime Minister Theresa May, her language more tenuous, told Sky News: “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,” she said.
After a brief pause, election campaigning resumed on Monday, with security the dominant topic ahead of Thursday’s vote. May has vowed to crack down on extremists, saying: “We cannot and must not pretend that things can continue as they are.”
But May was also facing mounting criticism for her record on security in the six years she served as Britain’s interior minister before becoming prime minister last year.
Between 2009 and 2016, the number of police officers fell by almost 20,000, or around 14 percent, according to the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies think-tank.
Opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has pledged to hire thousands of officers for neighbourhood duties, arguing that a grassroots approach would curb crime and radicalisation.
Analysts say the security debate favours Corbyn, who already seems to have been gaining ground ahead of Thursday’s election.
Poll lead vanishing
May called the snap general election on April 18, little more than two years into a five-year parliament, hoping that a commanding majority would give her a stronger hand in the Brexit negotiations with the European Union.
According to a poll published Tuesday by the group Survation, May’s one-time 20-point lead over Labour has shrivelled to just over a single point — 41.6 percent to 40.4 percent.
Most European and US stock markets retreated Tuesday, with investors shifting to safe havens and shunning British domestic shares as a protective move before the election, experts said.
In Saturday’s attack, three men, wearing fake suicide vests, mowed down pedestrians on London Bridge in a van before knifing revellers in Borough Market, a bustling district of late-night bars and restaurants.
The attackers were shot dead by armed police within eight minutes of the alarm being raised.
Amaq, an outlet affiliated with the Islamic State group, said the attacks were carried out by “a detachment of fighters from Islamic State”.
But London Mayor Sadiq Khan, describing himself as “a proud and patriotic British Muslim,” slapped down those who invoked Islam to justify acts of murder.
A Canadian charity worker, an Australian nurse and a Frenchman were among the dead.
Citizens of several nations were among the 48 injured, including Australia, Bulgaria, France, Greece and New Zealand.
Some 32 are still in hospital, 15 of whom are in a critical condition.
