The mastermind of the London Bridge terror cell Khuram Butt (pictured) and the family knew he held ‘extreme views’ and were unconvincing witnesses, the coroner has said
The wife and family of the mastermind behind the London Bridge terror attack were unconvincing witnesses and ‘should now have done more at the time’ to stop him, a coroner ruled today.
Chief coroner for England and Wales Mark Lucraft QC said the four members of Khuram Butt’s family who gave evidence during the inquest had known ‘something of his extreme views’.
Butt’s widow Zahrah Rehman, brother-in-law Usman Darr, brother Saad Butt, and sister Haleema Butt all gave evidence during the inquest at the Old Bailey.
Summing up the evidence on Friday Mr Lucraft said they had each accepted they should have done more at the time.
He added: ‘All of the family knew something of his extreme views. I have to say, I didn’t find any of them convincing witnesses. Each has accepted that they should now have done more at the time.’
Butt, 27, Rachid Redouane, 30, and Youssef Zaghba, 22, killed eight people and injured 48 more in a van and knife attack on June 3 2017.
They mowed down pedestrians on London Bridge before stabbing innocent bystanders at random in nearby Borough Market before being shot dead by armed police.
Terrorist Butt after he was shot by police in Borough Market. Butt and his fellow attacker strapped empty canisters to their waists to look like explosive devices to further terrify the public and police
Rachid Redouane (left) and Youssef Zaghba (right) killed eight t in the terror attack on London Bridge
This map shows the route the terrorists took as they murdered eight people in central London
Xavier Thomas, 45, Christine Archibald, 30, Sara Zelenak, 21, Sebastien Belanger, 36, James McMullan, 32, Kirsty Boden, 28, Alexandre Pigeard, 26, and Ignacio Echeverria, 39, were all killed.
Butt’s brother, Saad, had attended a barbeque three weeks before the attack in which one man stuck a skewer into some meat and said ‘this is how you gut an infidel’, the coroner said.
Mr Butt, a youth worker who has worked on the government’s counter-terrorism Prevent project, said he had not contacted the authorities about his brother because he thought they were already investigating him.
Khuram was arrested by police in October 2015 as part of a fraud investigation designed to disrupt his activities and told Saad he had been interviewed by counter-terrorism police.
Mr Butt said: ‘There was alarm bells ringing in my head and I thought, do I need to report him? But I felt reassured that they were involved and that at least somebody was doing something.’
Mr Butt said he had a dream about Khuram in April 2017, just after Mr Butt started a new job at the Damilola Taylor Centre in South London.
‘I had a dream that I’m in a youth centre supervising young people and he comes in with a shaven face, a suicide belt on, and his lips are blue and just as he’s about detonate it, I hug him to save others,’ he said. ‘The dream, I can’t describe the feeling it was very unnatural.’
He blamed MI5 for failing to stop his brother launching an attack saying ‘there was a live investigation going on, the loss of these lives could have been prevented. Those who had the intelligence and had the information they should have done more.’
He was asked if he ought to have reported his brother himself when he tried to travel to Syria and said: ‘On reflection yes, it would have been a harmless thing to do, but at the time he was trying to persuade us that his views had changed.’
But he added: ‘I felt capable of monitoring him, keeping in touch with him and making sure he went in the right direction,’ Mr Butt said. ‘Because of my training I felt competent. I never thought of ringing the Anti-Terrorism Hotline.’
Once a week he would go over and discuss politics, religion and culture he said.
Asked if he believed his brother had stopped associating with extremists, Mr Butt said: ‘I was doubtful, I continued to monitor his views and what direction he was heading. The decision to go to Syria was a shock to me, so I was determined to do my bit.’
But he admitted: ‘I was married with two children and we would meet weekly but I didn’t know what he was doing during the day, I’m not Prevent officer, I’m not MI5, I’m not the police.’
The inquest heard that Butt had a ring delivered for his wife and then watched cartoons with their children before going out to kill eight people.
Zahrah Rehman described how her husband would tell he had ‘four or five lads coming for dinner’ and that he was ‘very strict on segregation’ even hanging a curtain across the hallway in their one-bedroom flat in Barking.
Her brother-in-law called the Anti-terrorism Hotline to report Butt after a conversation in which he justified ISIS burning a captive alive.
‘To my face he would never talk like that,’ she said. ‘He would get angry. Anyone who tried to talk to him about these kind of topics he would just get angry and then eventually he would stop talking about it.’
At one stage she called her family to intervene when he said he wanted to take her and their young son on holiday to Turkey and she feared he would take them across the border to Syria.
‘He didn’t admit that he wanted to go to Syria. Everyone was very doubtful about his intentions. It ended up with everyone in my family and his family taking my passport and my son’s passport and his passport away.’
When he appeared in a film about radicals called the Jihadi Next Door, her family confronted him, she said: ‘I was really angry at him, embarrassed and ashamed at him. The next time he came to my parents’ house, my dad and brothers confronted him.
‘He said he was at that mosque to pray, he didn’t say he was intentionally there with that group. He was wrong place, wrong time.’
The night before the attack she gave him a massage and he kissed his wife on the wrist, she said.
‘Obviously in hindsight now, but at the time all these things just seemed like day to day occurrences. I didn’t think, he’s kissed my arm, he’s given me a ring, maybe he’s saying goodbye to me.’
She told the inquest her children did not go to his funeral and will never know where her husband’s grave it.
‘I am not going to grieve him, what he did was disgusting,’ she added. ‘I think he does not deserve my grieving.
The Isis fanatics ploughed into crowds crossing the River Thames in a rented Renault van (above) on June 3, 2017, before launching a knife rampage in nearby Borough Market killing eight
The van weighed down with sand and rocks in the back was rented and used in the London Bridge attacks to mow down pedestrians before crashing into railings outside the Barrowboy and Banker pub
The inquest his expected to conclude on Friday into the deaths of Xavier Thomas, 45, Christine Archibald, 30, James McMullan, 32, Alexandre Pigeard, 26, Kirsty Boden, 28, Sebastien Belanger, 36, Sara Zelenak, 21, and Ignacio Echeverria Miralles de Imperial, 39.
His brother’s claim to be ‘monitoring’ Khuram Butt was ‘extremely troubling’ and the coroner said he believed Saad had actually done ‘little if anything.’
Mr Lucraft said Saad was in a ‘slightly different position’ because of his previous involvement with the Young Muslims Advisory Group, which did work for the government’s Prevent project.
Despite Saad Butt’s claim to be monitoring his brother after his plans to travel to Turkey, the coroner said: ‘One extremely troubling question, is that it seems to me he did very little in terms of monitoring, it was limited to what he saw on social media.
‘He sought to pass the onus from himself to those to whom the reports had been made and seemed to accept everything his brother told him.
‘While can understand pressure through death of his daughter, it seems to be worrying that, despite the views his brother was espousing, he did very little, if anything to monitor his brother.’
The eight victims killed in the London Bridge terror attacks
Ignacio Echeverria
Spaniard Ignacio Echeverria was stabbed to death as he tried to fight off the terrorist attackers with his skateboard.
The 39-year-old had been in the UK for over a year was working as a financial crime analyst at HSBC.
Mr Echeverria joined unarmed police constables Wayne Marques and Charlie Guenigault in fighting off the three attackers as they set upon Marie Bondeville, hitting at least one terrorist with his skateboard.
‘His courageous efforts were to seek to stop the attack,’ Chief Coroner Mark Lucraft said.
Kirsty Boden
Mr Echeverria was the youngest of five siblings and was a Catholic who went to mass every week. He could speak English, German and French fluently.
Nurse Kirsty Boden was fatally stabbed as she tried to tend to the wounded and the dying.
Miss Boden, 28, moved to London in 2013 from the small town of Loxton, in South Australia.
She was a senior staff nurse at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital and lived with her British boyfriend James Hodder in a flat in Hampstead.
Mr Hodder said: ‘She loved people and loved her life helping others. To Kirsty, her actions that night would have been an extension of how she lived her life.’
Alexandre Pigeard
Alexandre Pigeard was working as a waiter at Boro Bistro when he was attacked.
The 26-year-old Frenchman had moved to London to further his ambitions as a dance music DJ.
Minutes before he was fatally stabbed, he video-called his father Philippe during a break from work at the French restaurant.
Mr Pigeard had planned to return to France in the autumn of 2017 to help open a restaurant in Nantes and to record an EP with his musician father.
Mr Pigeard senior told the inquest: ‘I’m present here as a devastated father who has lost a child in such circumstances – an inconsolable father.’
James McMullan
James McMullan was stabbed in the chest near the Barrowboy and Banker pub while he was celebrating getting financial backing for his online education company.
The British-Filipino entrepreneur was watching the Champions League final with friends in the pub.
The 32-year-old, from Hackney in East London, was attacked when he stepped outside to have a cigarette.
He had dreamed of helping children without access to education through his e-learning company.
Mr McMullan’s father Simon described his son as ‘funny, charming and clever’ and said ‘his fearlessness could never be underestimated’.
Sebastien Belanger
The mother of chef Sebastien Belanger said she does not forgive the terrorists who ‘mutilated and killed him’.
Her 36-year-old son was drinking at the Boro Bistro when he was stabbed repeatedly in the chest.
His mother Josiane Belanger said: ‘We miss him so much, his smile, his joie de vivre. I do not forgive what they did to him.’
Originally from Angers in western France, Mr Belanger started work at the Coq d’Argent in the City and was promoted to the role of head chef.
Australian au pair Sara Zelenak was on the ‘trip of a lifetime’ when she was stabbed to death while on a night out with a friend.
Sara Zelenak
Miss Zelenak’s mother Julie Wallace said ‘every sliding door’ put her daughter in ‘harm’s way’.
‘She was meant to be working and at the last minute she got the night off,’ Mrs Wallace said.
‘At 10pm Sara’s phone rang and her friend said ‘I’ve finished at the rugby’ and so she left her safe haven and walked out into a terrorist attack and was stabbed to death.’
Before leaving for UK in March 2017, Miss Zelenak worked with her stepfather Mark as a crane truck operator in Brisbane to save up for her trip.
Her parents have since set up Sarz Sanctuary to help other families to cope with grief.
Xavier Thomas
Xavier Thomas was walking over London Bridge with his girlfriend Christine Delcros when they were hit by the van.
The 45-year-old father-of-two was catapulted into the Thames and his girlfriend suffered life-changing injuries. His body was recovered downstream three days later.
Mr Thomas, who had arrived in London on the day of the attack, lived near Paris and worked for American Express.
Miss Delcros said: ‘Since Xavier disappeared in such tragic and traumatic circumstances our whole world has fallen apart.’
Canadian tourist Christine Archibald told her fiance Tyler Ferguson she loved him seconds before she was mowed down.
Christine Archibald
Miss Archibald and Mr Ferguson were walking across London Bridge after dinning at a nearby restaurant when the atrocity unfolded.
Her fiancé said: ‘At one point Chrissy stopped me out of nowhere, grabbed me close and gave me a passionate kiss after telling me she loved me.
‘I remember it being a warm summer’s evening and the sun had just gone down.. And then the attack took place and Chrissy was killed.
‘No words can express how I felt when this happened. I was absolutely devastated and inconsolable. Nothing has ever been the same since.’
Miss Archibald’s engagement ring was lost during the attack, but later recovered from the bridge. Mr Ferguson now wears it on a chain around his neck.