19:07

One of the three terrorists who attacked London Bridge called his mother on Thursday in what she now believes was a “call of farewell”.

Valeria Collina told L’Espresso magazine that she only realised her son Youssef Zaghba’s intention after she learned that he was behind the terror attack that killed seven people in London.

“Even though he did not say anything in particular, I felt it from his voice,” Collina said.

“We have always tried to control his friendships, but the internet came around. Then in London he was with the wrong people. I understand why the imams don’t want to celebrate his funeral,” she said.



Italian officers came looking for Collina early on Tuesday morning, according to the report. Initially Collina, who lived in Morocco on and off for years before returning to Italy about a year and a half ago, believed they were coming to ask her more questions about her son’s disappearance, which she had reported to local police.

“Unfortunately we are not here for that. We came to tell you another thing,” they told her. “Your son is dead.”

She recalled the last conversation, in which they discussed an upcoming visit to London.

“We joked about how he would welcome me at the London airport. I was to go see him in 10 days to celebrate the end of Ramadan. He had recently bought a used car and I asked him if he would put flags on it for me,” Collina told the magazine.

She lost touch with him after that. Even immediately after the attack, she did not suspect his involvement.

“I only found out later that [the other assailants] were his friends, and I told myself that maybe he’s hiding from the authorities to not get into trouble, since in Italy he was still being monitored,” she said.

While he did talk about Syria, a country where Zaghba told his mother he believed he could live under “pure Islam”, he never spoke about fighting, she said.

She said people might blame her, but it was the internet that was to blame.

She said asking for forgiveness was futile, but she would dedicate her life to ensuring “this does not happen again”.

“We must fight the ideology of the Islamic State with true knowledge, and I will do it with all my strength.”

Franco Bortolini, a neighbour of Collina, described Zaghba as “normal”, the son of a “simple lady” who was “very respectful”.

“I would pass by the door and he would say hello, good morning and good evening. For me he was a normal person. After a while not seeing him, she [Collina] said he went to work in England,” Bortolini told the Guardian.

The news that Zaghba was involved in a terror attack at first struck Bortolini as unbelievable when he was first approached by a reporter at 2pm on Tuesday.

Bortolini had known Zaghba on and off for years, since he was a boy. Even though the family mostly lived in Morocco, they would return to Italy and spend about 20 days a year in Castello di Serravalle, a leafy village about 25km from the city of Bologna.

He did not have any particular hobbies and was not into sports, but there was nothing particularly unusual about him, he recalled. About a year and a half ago, Collina returned to Italy without her husband. Bortolini saw her taking a walk on Monday night and on Tuesday morning, but she refused to answer the door following several attempts to summon her by journalists camped outside the two-storey apartment building.

Bortolini did not recall Collina ever saying she was worried about her son or that she had noticed any changes in her behaviour. He described Collina as “quiet” and said she was not employed. She worshipped at the town’s closest mosque, in Bazzano. The last time Bortolini recalled seeing Zaghba was about six months ago.

“I can’t imagine it for anything, for anything,” he said.

