Police admit they had been aware of one of the alleged London attackers

Kim Hjelmgaard | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption London terror attack: What we know Police have detained more than a dozen people and continue to gather evidence after another terror attack in London. It's the third attack in Britain in three months.

LONDON — British police and the MI5 domestic security agency acknowledged Monday that they had been aware of one of the three alleged London Bridge attackers, Khuram Shazad Butt, 27, a British citizen born in Pakistan, but they had no specific intelligence to indicate he was plotting a terrorist assault.

Butt was publicly identified Monday along with Rachid Redouane, 30, who had claimed to be Moroccan and Libyan. Police fatally shot the attackers within eight minutes of receiving an emergency call Saturday night. Authorities were still trying to establish the identity of the third assailant.

After ramming a rented van into pedestrians on London Bridge, three men armed with knives went on a stabbing rampage in nearby Borough Market. Seven people were killed and 48 injured. Eighteen people remain in critical condition in London hospitals.

Butt and Redouane were both living in Barking, in east London. Police arrested 12 people soon after the attack, but they were all released without charges, London police said late Monday.

Police said they are still working to uncover more information about the men, including any places they may have frequented, whether they had any connections to extremist networks or were supported by anyone else, and what their movements were in the days and hours before the attack.

The Islamic State, or ISIS, said it was responsible for the vehicle and knife assault, but that claim has not been substantiated. Other attacks have been committed without direct ISIS involvement by terrorists who are sympathizers of the radical group.

An unidentified friend of Butt's told the BBC that he contacted authorities on two separate occasions after becoming concerned that his friend may have become radicalized. The friend said the warnings were not heeded, the British broadcaster said.

The friend told the BBC that some of Butt's views may have been picked up while watching YouTube videos of Ahmad Musa Jibril, an American-Palestinian Islamic cleric who preaches radical viewpoints. The Counter Extremism Project, a think tank, said he may have influenced some Westerners to fight in Syria.

Separately, a neighbor of Butt's claimed she also reported him to authorities after he attempted to convert her children to Islam and radicalize them, the Telegraph reported. Erica Gasparri, who lived near the suspect said she reported him to police two years ago, but no action appeared to have been taken. Gasparri said she confronted the man after two of her children came home and said: “Mummy I want to become a Muslim."

"He would go down to the park and talk to them about Islam. He also came to the houses and gave the kids money and sweets during Ramadan," she said.

Butt appeared in a documentary that aired last year called The Jihadis Next Door, which warned of the rise of Islamist extremists in London. In the documentary, Butt is seen praying near an ISIS flag in London’s Regent’s Park.

Mohammed Shafiq, chief executive of the Ramadhan Foundation, a British Muslim group that advocates "peaceful co-existence," said Monday that he was verbally assaulted by Butt in Westminster in May 2013, the day after British Army soldier Lee Rigby was brutally murdered by two extremists who said they were avenging the killing of Muslims by British troops.

Shafiq said Butt "called me a Murtad, which means traitor in Arabic and accused me of being a government stooge" for his public campaign against Rigby's murder and Islamic extremism. He said police escorted Butt away.

"Many of us in the British Muslim community have been demanding action against these extremists to no avail," he said in a statement. "I am not surprised that Khuram Butt carried out the terrorist attack ... Terrorist sympathizers have been known to authorities and nothing was done for years."







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