British officials hit back last night at Italian claims that the country had alerted the UK to the terrorist intentions of one of the London Bridge attackers. Italian officials did not provide full details to the Schengen Information System (SIS), an EU database, in relation to Youssef Zaghba’s attempt to travel to Syria to join Islamic State last year, sources told The Times.
While Zaghba was stopped at Stansted in January, the SIS alert seen by Border Force officials did not include the fact that he had told Italians he “wanted to be a terrorist”. Instead it provided information that suggested he had been involved in a criminal matter, sources said. Claims from Italy on Tuesday increased pressure on British intelligence services and border officials over failures to prevent Saturday night’s atrocity, the third lethal terrorist attack in England in ten weeks.
Concerns were raised yesterday about Zaghba’s multiple trips between Britain and Bologna, where his mother lives, despite his arrest in Italy in March 2016 as he tried to fly to Syria via Turkey on a one-way ticket. British officials are understood to be frustrated by mixed reports coming out of Italy in relation to the intelligence provided. Italian officials said that they provided separate information to a second database, accessed by intelligence partners across Europe. It is unclear what detail was given.
Scotland Yard, which was investigating Zaghba’s fellow attacker, Khuram Butt, said on Tuesday that Zaghba was never a “subject of interest” to police or intelligence sources. A Whitehall source said: “The police statement was carefully worded”.
Britain may have been powerless to bar Zaghba from entering the country because of EU immigration rules which state a person “must represent a genuine, present and sufficiently serious threat affecting one of the fundamental interests of society” to be refused entry.
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Lord Carlile of Berriew, QC, a former reviewer of anti-terrorism legislation, said the Italians appeared to have failed to share information properly. He said: “If the Italian authorities regarded this man as a terrorist it is shocking that they did not say that in the intelligence they provided.”
Italian officials stood by their claims and said that, after concerns were flagged to British authorities, Zaghba, who was born in Morocco, twice travelled from Britain to visit his mother, Valeria Collina. He had been stopped at Bologna airport in March 2016 while trying to take a flight to Turkey.
Giuseppe Amato, the Bologna magistrate, said that Zaghba told an official that he “wanted to be a terrorist”, while an investigation source confirmed that there was Isis material on his phone. However, he was released and returned to the UK. Zaghba travelled to Italy in September and returned again to the UK, when the SIS alert appears to have been triggered. He made his final trip to Italy at Christmas before returning to London in January.
On each trip he was placed under close surveillance by Italian police, it was claimed. “The police would be waiting for him at the steps of the aircraft when he landed,” Ms Collina said.
Mr Amato insisted that Italian officials sent their UK counterparts a written warning about the risk he posed. The magistrate told The Guardian that he saw a report that had been sent to London about the Moroccan-born Italian citizen. “We did our best. We could just monitor him and send a note to British authorities, that’s all we could do. And we did it,” Mr Amato said. “Since he moved to London, he came back to Italy once in a while for a total of ten days. And during those ten days we never let him out of our sight.”
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The Home Office refused to comment.
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