ONE of the London Bridge attackers was seen washing blood off his knife and wiping it on his beard after killing eight people, an inquest has heard.
Khuram Butt, 27, was caught on CCTV cameras cleaning his ceramic knife inside Black and Blue restaurant. Another terrorist, Youssef Zaghba, 22, was caught taking a drink from the tap behind the bar.
These images were among the clips shown during the second day of the inquest into the deaths of eight people murdered during the attacks on June 3, 2017.
A mobile phone video captures the terror among people as Butt and his men could be heard shouting “Allahu Akbar”.
Butt, Zaghba and Rachid Redouane, another attacker who was seen tying his shoe lace in the middle of the rampage, were shot dead by armed police 10 minutes after they hit the first victim with their van on London Bridge.
Besides killing eight, they injured 48 others.
The only person the trio did not attack was an unidentified man who was seen briefly speaking to Redouane by Borough Market.
“There’s clearly some form of discussion, we don’t know what was said and despite witness appeals the man never came forward,” said Det Supt Becky Riggs, from the Metropolitan Police counterterror command.
Gareth Patterson QC, a lawyer representing six of the victims’ families, told the court they had filled the van with bags of industrial gravel – possibly to make it heavier and deadlier.
He said the attackers “acted with a degree of discipline” and had donned fake suicide belts.
The trio had trained at the Ummah Fitness Centre in Ilford and were “trying to cause maximum injury” by stabbing victims in the throat, neck and upper chest, Patterson said.
Christine Archibald, 30, and Xavier Thomas, 45, were hit by the terrorists’ van before they crashed. The others — Alexandre Pigeard, 26, Sara Zelenak, 21, Kirsty Boden, 28, Sebastien Belanger, 36, James McMullan, 32, and Ignacio Echeverria, 39 — were all stabbed to death.
The inquest continues.
