Bologna prosecutor says he saw report sent to London about terrorist and that in Italy ‘we never let him out of our sight’

An Italian prosecutor who led an investigation into the London Bridge attacker Youssef Zaghba has said officials provided Britain with a written warning about the risk he posed last year, and were so concerned about him they monitored him while he was in the country.

Giuseppe Amato, the chief prosecutor in Bologna, told the Guardian that information about the risk Zaghba posed was shared with officials in the UK after he had tried to travel from Italy to join Islamic State in Syria in March 2016.

Zaghba’s name was placed on a Europe-wide database that included potential extremists. But the warning about the 22-year old who helped kill eight people and injure 48 more on Saturday night appears not to have been picked up. Scotland Yard has said he “was not a police or MI5 subject of interest”.

London attacks: body of eighth victim recovered from Thames - latest updates Read more

The claims will increase pressure on the British security services to explain if they could have done more to stop the attack at London Bridge and in Borough Market. Zaghba’s Pakistani-born co-conspirator, Khuram Butt, 27, was investigated by British police in 2015, but he was also considered a low priority.

The prime minister said on Tuesday that police and the intelligence agencies will carry out a review into whether they could have prevented the attack.

Amato said he saw a report that had been sent to London by the chief counter-terrorism official in Bologna about Zaghba, a Moroccan-born Italian citizen who reportedly told officials when he was stopped heading for Syria in 2016: “I am going to be a terrorist.” It has been reported that when that comment was met with shock, he changed it to: “I am going to be a tourist”.



“We did our best,” said Amato. “We could just monitor and surveil him and send a note to British authorities, that’s all we could do. And we did it. Since he moved to London, he came back to Italy once in a while for a total of 10 days. And during those 10 days we never let him out of our sight.”

Italian security sources have revealed that Britain is home to at least 100 other Italians who have been flagged as posing a potential terrorist risk on the same Europe-wide database that Zaghba appeared on.



One of the men returned from being with Isis in Syria in 2014, after learning how to fire weapons, undergoing 30 days of Qur’anic learning and being asked if he wanted to be a fighter or a suicide bomber. After he was interviewed last year by British authorities they concluded: “He is not a person of interest and does not represent a serious risk for the national security,” according to security documents seen by the Guardian.

Italy’s national police chief, Franco Gabrielli, said on Wednesday that he felt in “a position of strength” on the Zaghba issue. “Our consciences are clear and our papers are in order.”

Zaghba moved to London about 18 months ago and was working in a restaurant as a cook and waiter. He twice returned to his mother’s home in a hamlet about 15 miles outside Bologna. His mother, Valeria Collina, 68, said he had become friends with Butt and the third attacker, Rachid Redouane, 30.

She confirmed that Zaghba was followed by Italian counter-terrorism officers during his visits.

“I am grateful to the police for the work they did: every time my son was here, [there] was one of the Digos [counter-terrorism officers] following him,” she told reporters. “I think they have done an amazing job.”

That contrasted with the lack of surveillance in the UK. Amato said Zaghba had been placed on a Europe-wide watch list known as the second generation Schengen information system. “He was definitely on a list of suspected terrorists and that list could have been accessed by the British,” he said.

When Zaghba flew to Italy from London in September 2016, he told security handlers who interviewed him that he was settled in London and living with Polish people while working as a cook, according to reports in La Repubblica citing security sources. When he returned again in December 2016, he said he had moved to Barking, east London, to live with some Pakistani people and was working as a sound technician at an Arab-language television station in London.

His mother said: “Last year, when I visited him in England, he was cold and distant and I understood from his look that he became radicalised about Islam and its values. This happened in England. He had a dark look on his face.”

Italian security sources have claimed that when he flew back to London from Italy for the last time in January, British officials at Stansted airport accessed information about him that had been filed by the Italians on the Schengen database, but they let him go.



MI5 declines to comment on claims about intelligence sharing. Both the British and Italian intelligence agencies have long lists of potential suspects but have different priorities over who poses the highest risk and how to deploy limited resources.

In the UK, officials say they are dealing with 23,000 people who are or have been “subjects of interest” with regards to potential terrorism, of whom 3,000 are under active investigation. In Italy, there are about 10,000 potential terrorists, 1,000 of which are classified as subjects of interest under “red” surveillance.

“I’m not blaming anybody,” Amato said. “I don’t know the details of the investigation in London. I can just say the Italians did everything they could. We monitored him while he was here and our officers had alerted the British authorities.”