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| Dan Kitwood/Getty Images |
- Seven civilians were killed in a pair of attacks in downtown London on Saturday night, with dozens more injured. The attackers ran over pedestrians on London Bridge, and then stabbed random passersby in the entertainment district of Borough Market. [BBC]
- From Karla Adam and Rick Noack: “It was clear that the incident was meant for all the world to see. At around 10 p.m., a white van mowed down pedestrians as it zigzagged across London Bridge ... [The three assailants] tore through nearby Borough Market leaving a trail of blood in their wake — seven people died and dozens more were injured. …During the day, it’s a food lover’s paradise — vendors from around the world sell dishes with enticing aromas and tourists from around the world buy them. It is perhaps not surprising that a number of nationalities have been reported among those who were wounded, including French and Australian.”
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| Niklas Halle'N/AFP/Getty Images |
- All three attackers were killed within minutes of the police’s arrival, thanks to police being unusually free (for the UK) with their bullets. [The Guardian / Vikram Dodd]
- The relatively contained nature of the attacks is likely part of why Londoners’ reaction to the attacks has been a fairly studied stiff upper lip. (If you would like some anecdotes about charming British fortitude, here are those.) [Rossalyn Warren]
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| Khuram Butt (left) and Rachid Redouane (right) |
One of the three London Bridge terrorists made a last visit to his baby daughter just hours before his bloody rampage while his accomplice posted lines from the Quran in the last message he sent on Whatsapp. Moroccan-born Rachid Redouane went to the mother of his 18-month-old girl's flat in Barking to kiss his daughter goodbye. The terrorist and Charisse O'Leary, 38, had split in January over his warped Islamic views which included banning his girl watching TV in the fear it would turn her gay. Redouane's estranged wife was one of 12 arrested and released without charge in connection with Saturday night's massacre.
The [second identified] killer to be named was [a known] British extremist, Khuram Butt, who was filmed unfurling an ISIS flag on national TV and was reported to the police twice.
Butt, 27, a married father of two nicknamed 'Abz' who was born in Pakistan, was so extreme he called fellow Muslims without beards non-believers, would not speak to women directly and was banned from a mosque for berating worshippers for being 'un-Islamic'.
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Butt was known to both the police and MI5 who are awaiting what they described as international confirmation before naming the third terrorist as it emerged Molotov cocktails were found in the hired vehicle used in the rampage. The force probed his extremist Islamic views two years ago, but his file slid down the priority list because it was deemed he wasn’t planning an attack.
Butt's involvement is doubly embarrassing for police and the security services because he appeared in a TV documentary last year about British jihadis – and was also involved in a filmed altercation with police in a pair of Rayban sunglasses after he unfurled an ISIS flag in Regent's Park.On Channel 4's The Jihadis Next Door he was caught on camera alongside two notorious preachers who were well known to police and intelligence officials because of their extremist views.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4572568/Jihadi-Arsenal-shirt-married-father-Khuram-Butt.html#ixzz4jBzUgcJB
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ELECTORAL IMPLICATIONS:
- UK Prime Minister Theresa May, in a speech Sunday after the attacks, took the opportunity to reopen the idea of a more aggressive “counter-radicalization” agenda that would include regulation of the internet and expanded police powers. [The Atlantic / J. Weston Phippen]
Griff Witte and Karla Adam report: “The latest attack to hit Britain this spring became a campaign issue Sunday, with just four days before an unpredictable national election. … Following the May 22 attack in Manchester, Saturday night’s van-and-knife rampage was the second mass-casualty attack to intrude on the homestretch of a parliamentary campaign that was once thought certain to end in a landslide for Prime Minister Theresa May and the Conservatives. The race has tightened in recent weeks, and terrorism has introduced an unexpected variable...
- Jeremy Corbyn, whom May has often accused of coddling anti-Western militants. May, Corbyn’s backers said, had politicized the attack.
- But by evening, Corbyn had hit back with his own political response to the killing, accusing May and her Conservative allies of weakening security services through years of austerity."
- If the widespread raids in East London Sunday, intended to find people involved in the attacks, are a harbinger of May’s “counter-radicalization” campaign, that’s not a great sign; all 12 of those arrested were released without charge on Monday. [Washington Examiner / Kyle Feldscher]
- (The reality, Vox’s Zack Beauchamp writes, is that it’s very hard to stop this sort of small-scale, simple attack.) [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]