By Gavin Mackintosh-
The MI5 and the police appear to have egg on their face. An Italian prosecutor who led an investigation into London Bridge attacker.
Youssof Dhagaba says, Italian officials warned the UK about the risk he posed, and he was under constant monitoring when he was in Italy.
Chief prosecutor, Giuseppe Amato, investigated Zaghba in 2016 when the extremist tried to join the Islamic State in Syria. Amato told the Guardian that he personally saw a report that had been sent to London by the chief counter-terrorism official in Bologna about the Moroccan-born Italian citizen.
“We did our best. We could just monitor and surveil him and send a note to British authorities, that’s all we could do. And we did it,” Amato said. “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.”
Yesterday, news was released that Zagba had been put on an EU wide watch list, raising serious questions as to how he managed to escape airport and passport control authorities during his return to the UK. Now, the M15 and the police may be hung to try unless they can properly explain this catastrophic blunder that led to 8 unnecessary deaths last Saturday at London Bridge.
ACCOMPLICE
Zagbab’s accomplice, Khuram Butt, 27, was known to the police and MI5 since 2015 when they opened an investigation into him in 2015. The official line from Zaghba was that he was not a police or MI5 subject of interest”. On both counts, the security services were wrong, and a fatal error was made. Both men should have been subjects of interest, and given the clear warning signs missed, we must ask how come they did not connect both terrorists as friends, Zagba’s mother has already told reporters that the trio murderers were friends who knew each other.
Chief inspector Amato stated that Zaghba returned to Italy from the UK for a total of 10 days, during which his ‘’every move’’ was monitored. Zaghba , who was on a Europe-wide watch list had already idiotically told officials in Bologna on his way to Istanbul :’’I am going to be a terrorist’’ .
LIST OF SUSPECTS
The Guardian points out that British Intelligent agencies has a long list of potential suspects which they have to rank in order of priority, meaning that there are not enough resources to monitor all suspects equally. That may be where the problem was, but that still cannot wash away the embarrassing shame of the terrorist passing through customs and passport checks at the airport when British authorities had been warned by more than one source. Only a thorough and credible explanation can change the obvious conclusion that some really shabby job was done by somebody along the line. The British public would like to know who that was.