British Police Name Two of Three London Attackers as May Calls for Crackdown Khuram Shazad Butt was known to security services, and neighbors say he had appeared in a documentary called “The Jihadis Next Door’ By Georgi Kantchev, Riva Gold, Mike Bird and Margot Patrick
https://www.wsj.com/articles/british-police-identify-london-attackers-as-may-calls-for-crackdown-on-extremists-1496663010
LONDON—One of three knife-wielding assailants who killed seven people in a weekend terror attack here was known to security services, authorities said Monday. Neighbors said his zeal for Islamic extremism was broadcast to the nation in a television documentary called “The Jihadis Next Door.”
But police said they had no intelligence suggesting the man, Khuram Shazad Butt, a 27-year-old Pakistan-born British citizen, was plotting violence ahead of Saturday’s rampage.
Several neighbors said Butt had appeared in the documentary, which followed radical preachers calling for Islamic law in Britain and was aired early last year. One neighbor said Butt was reported to the police as a potential danger two years ago. Police declined to comment.
On Monday, police also identified a second attacker as Rachid Redouane, 30, who they said had claimed to be Moroccan and Libyan. They said they were working to determine the identity of the third attacker.
Saturday night’s attack in a crowded area of pubs and restaurants was the third by Islamist terrorists this year in the U.K.—and the third involving someone who had come to the attention of security officials but wasn’t deemed threatening enough to be closely monitored or detained before they struck.
“We cannot go on as we are,” British Prime Minister Theresa May said Monday, pledging to take tough new steps against Islamist extremism. She vowed to crack down on online radicalism and said she would consider expanding the powers of the police.
London’s police chief, Cressida Dick, named one thing she didn’t think should be considered: arming regular officers. “I don’t think the public in this country want to live in a place where we are all armed to the teeth,” she told the British Broadcasting Corp. on Monday. CONTINUE AT SITE
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