- Wednesday, May 08, 2024
By: Keerthi Mohan
THE leader of the London Bridge terror attack had passed vetting for a job on the London Underground despite being featured in a documentary about extremism.
Khuram Butt was employed to carry out security checks despite appearing in The Jihadis Next Door, a Channel 4 documentary, an inquest heard.
Butt’s family said he “brought shame on the family” in the programme and forced him to apologise.
The inquest at the Old Bailey heard how Butt turned from a “hardworking” schoolboy interested in football, music, drinks and drugs into a terrorist.
He started showing signs of extremism around 2013. In September 2015, Butt had to be physically separated from his brother-in-law Usman Darr after the latter became enraged when Butt justified the Daesh for burning to death a captured Jordanian pilot.
This incident prompted Darr to report his brother-in-law to an anti-terrorist hotline.
“He was extremely concerned about these views and he contacted the anti-terrorist hotline to report his brother-in-law,” Wayne Jolley of Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorism command told the inquest.
In early 2015, Butt’s family became concerned after he said he wanted to go to Syria. They stopped him and destroyed his passport.
Butt met Rachid Redouane and Youssef Zaghba, with whom he carried out the London Bridge attacks, at the Unmah fitness centre in east London.
Butt and Zaghba also taught children as young as seven at an Islamic primary school.
Butt was born in Pakistan in 1990 and came to the UK on a visitor’s visa with his family when he was eight. In 2004, following the death of his father, Butt was given indefinite leave to remain in the UK.
He went to schools in Forest Gate and Stratford in east London and married Zahrah Rehman in December 2013. They went on to have two children.
Those who died in the attack were Sara Zelenak, 21, Alexandre Pigeard, 26, Christine Archibald, 30, James McMullan, 32, Kirsty Boden, 28, Sebastien Belanger, 36, Ignacio Echeverria, 39 and Xavier Thomas, 45.
The inquest continues.
