• Friday, March 29, 2024

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London Bridge inquest: Family member’s warning was not passed to police

Photographs of the people killed in the London Bridge terror attack are placed as members of various faiths gather on London Bridge, (Photo: DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS/AFP/Getty Images)

By: Keerthi Mohan

POLICE officials investigating the ringleader of the London Bridge attack were not aware that Khuram Butt was reported to a terror hotline, an inquest heard on Tuesday (4).

A senior counter-terror office who was investigating Khuram Butt two years before the 2017 London Bridge attack admitted there was a “failing” in how a warning from his brother-in-law was handled.

Usman Darr, the brother of Butt’s wife, had reported Butt to the national terror hotline after noticing “radical changes in his personality.” Darr also said Butt was distributing anti-Western texts and links to jihadi sites. But the family member’s warning was not passed on to the police.

“It did not come to me, nor did not come to anyone in my team, and that was a failing,” the Metropolitan Police officer who headed the investigation the inquest on Tuesday. “I think the assessment was wrong.”

Last week, the inquest heard that Darr and Butt got into an argument in September 2015 and they had to be physically separated. Darr became enraged when Butt defended Daesh for burning to death a captured Jordanian pilot, which was filmed and released as a propaganda video.

Butt was known to be a member of Anjem Choudary’s al-Muhajiroun (ALM), and he was being watched for planning potential attacks in 2015. Darr’s warning was passed on to another team investigating ALM, the inquest heard.

Butt was known to be a member of Anjem Choudary’s al-Muhajiroun.

The police officer, who was named as Witness M because of an anonymity order, also said he wasn’t aware Butt had appeared in a Channel 4 documentary titled The Jihadis Next Door.

“I wasn’t aware of Khuram Butt within that programme, but I was aware that an assessment had been made around the programme,” said Witness M.

The documentary showed Butt with other ALM members in Regent’s Park, making extremist statements.

Eight people were killed and 48 others injured in the attack Butt carried out with two other men — Rachid Redouane, 30, and Youssef Zaghba, 22.

Xavier Thomas, 45, Christine Archibald, 30, Sara Zelenak, 21, Sebastien Belanger, 36, James McMullan, 32, Kirsty Boden, 28, Alexandre Pigeard, 26, and Ignacio Echeverria, 39, were all killed in the attack.

The inquests continue.

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