London attacker's family hotel in Pakistan searched

Police on Tuesday identified the third of London Bridge attackers who killed seven people as an Italian. Pakistani authorities meanwhile searched the family hotel of a Pakistan-born Briton who was one of the three terrorists.

Security agencies on Tuesday searched the hotel in Mujahidabad area in Karachi owned by an uncle of Khuram Shazad Butt, 27, who was among the three terrorists shot dead by police after their Saturday night terror.

The hotel is located on Grand Trunk Road, Dawn reported. Residents in the area confirmed the search.

The search was a precaution after Butt's link to Pakistan was uncovered by British investigators. British media said Butt was previously known to police and the spy agency MI5. But he is said to have been not radicalised in Pakistan.

Butt even appeared in a Channel 4 documentary, "The Jihadis Next Door", last year.

Butt's fellow attackers were Rachid Redouane, 30, a Moroccan-Libyan pastry chef who had an Irish wife, and Youssef Zaghba, a 22-year-old Italian national of Moroccan descent who was on Italy's list of persons at risk after being held in 2016 while on way to Syria.

All three were shot dead by police after they drove a hired van into pedestrians on London Bridge at around 10 p.m. before stabbing people in the area around the nearby Borough Market, killing seven people and injuring nearly 50.

London Metropolitan Police said on Tuesday that Zaghba was not a police or M15 subject of interest. At the time of the London Bridge attack, he had been working in a London restaurant.

Zaghba's parents reportedly lived in Morocco but then separated and his mother settled in Bologna, Italy. Zaghba spent a lot of time with relatives in East London but visited his mother several times.

When Zaghba was stopped at Bologna's airport in March 2016, he told his mother he was going to Rome.

At that time, Zaghba was travelling with just a backpack and his passport was impounded. His mobile phone was also confiscated and was found to contain religious videos and images but no violent jihadist images.

He was, however, charged with international terrorism and recorded on intelligence files as a suspected foreign fighter.

Although the charge was later withdrawn, he remained on file as "a person at risk", Italian daily Corriere della Sera reported.

Italy's intelligence services had reported Zaghba and his frequent movements to Moroccan and British authorities.

All 12 people arrested on Sunday after the attack have now been released without charge while a 27-year-old man was held in Barking near London on Tuesday, police said.

Source: Khaleej Times