Khuram Shazad Butt and Rachid Redouane: What we know about the London Bridge attackers

Seven people were killed and 48 others were injured in a terror attack in the British capital on Saturday night when a van smashed into pedestrians on London Bridge before three assailants went on a stabbing spree. The attackers were shot dead by the police at the scene. London’s Metropolitan Police on Monday named Khuram Shazad Butt and Rachid Redouane as two of the suspected attackers. Khuram Butt, the terrorist who had appeared in a documentary [caption id=“attachment_3522381” align=“alignleft” width=“380” class=“leftalign”] Khuram Shazad Butt. AP[/caption] Butt, 27, was a British citizen born in Pakistan who was known to security services and even featured in a documentary entitled The Jihadis Next Door, that aired on British television last year, reported AP. Butt’s neighbours identified him from the film’s footage on Monday, pointing to a scene in which he is shown participating in a provocative prayer session at Regents Park, near London’s biggest mosque helping to display a black flag covered in white Arabic lettering similar to the one used by the Islamic State group, which took responsibility for the attack. Butt is also seen in the film sprawling on the lawn and nodding as he listens to a sermon in which the speaker tells those gathered: “This is not the real life, my dear brothers. This is a passing time for us.” As details about Butt emerged, they prompted questions of whether he could have been stopped sooner. Butt’s apparent zealotry had led one neighbour, Erica Gasparri, to contact police about 18 months ago. The 42-year-old mother of three was working at a local school when she noticed Butt, who was also known as Abu Mohamed, meeting with local children and trying to draw them into his radicalism. “It was wrong what he was doing,” Gasparri said. “He kept talking about the Islamic State. I got very angry.”

Salaudeen Jailabdeen, who lived near Butt, said the alleged assailant had once been ejected from a local mosque for interrupting an imam. Another neighbour, Michael Mimbo, said he saw the van used in the attack near his home on Saturday, but didn’t see who was behind the wheel. He said the vehicle was seen going the wrong way down a one-way street and was later seen speeding off, followed closely by a small red car. Rachid Redouane, who had seen his ex-wife hours before the attack [caption id=“attachment_3522391” align=“alignright” width=“380”] Rachid Redouane. AP[/caption] broadcaster RTE reported that Redouane had an Irish residency card and had lived in Dublin, according to AFP. Authorities also told AP that Redouane alternately used the surname Elkhdar and used two different birthdates that would make him either 25 or 30. Reouane married in Ireland in 2012 and the couple later moved to the UK, according to The Telegraph. His 38-year-old wife never converted to her husband’s faith and one of Redouane’s friends later revealed that the couple split up because they clashed over how to raise their daughter. Neighbours of Redouane’s wife said that he was seen visiting his wife only three hours before the attack. One of the neighbours even told The Telegraph that he had stood next to the terrorist in a lift as he went up to his wife’s apartment. “I’ve seen him four or five times, he’s come here often to see his daughter. He didn’t say a word, we just stood there silently until we got to his floor. It was only the next day when my mate told me about the attacks that I realised it was him. It’s scary you know. I don’t like the fact that my kids were living in the same block as this guy,” the report quoted him as saying. As details of Redouane’s Irish links were revealed, a Muslim imam and scholar based in Britain alleged that authorities had repeatedly ignored his warnings about local activists from the Islamic State. Prime Minister Theresa May said the attackers were driven by “Islamist extremism”, and the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for Saturday’s rampage. Both men lived in Barking, an ethnically diverse part of east London where police carried out several raids on Sunday and Monday. With inputs from agencies