One of the London Bridge attackers was refused asylum in the UK but was able to remain after marrying a British woman in Ireland.
Rachid Redouane, 30, who was shot dead by police in the atrocity, applied for asylum from Morocco to Britain in 2009 but his request was denied.
Redouane had no known links with terrorists and Scotland Yard is still piecing together his movements since he arrived in Europe from North Africa.
Yesterday MI5 was accused of ignoring warnings from Italian police that his accomplice Youssef Zaghba, 22, the youngest of the attackers, “wanted to be a terrorist” and had Islamic State material on his phone. It raises further questions for the British intelligence services over their failure to prevent the van and knife rampage that left seven people dead and dozens injured.
In 2012 Redouane, a pastry chef, met Charisse O’Leary, 38, a care worker living in Manchester with her partner of nine years. The pair began a whirlwind relationship and she moved back to London. Described by her ex-boyfriend as an “outgoing girl, a great conversationalist who liked to have a drink”, Ms O’Leary got married to Redouane a few months later.
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In November 2012, at a ceremony at a register office in Sir Patrick Dun’s hospital in Dublin city centre, with Ms O’Leary’s mother as their witness, the couple listed as their home an address in Rathmines, Dublin.
The previous year Ireland adopted a directive that allowed non-EU citizens married to EU citizens to travel freely throughout the union. Under common travel area laws a passport is not needed to travel between Ireland and the UK.
Britain allows the freedom of movement of people within the two islands as well as the rights to reside, work and access public services.
After the wedding Ms O’Leary moved in with her parents in Dagenham, east London, while her husband returned to Morocco, where she visited him on holiday. On a Facebook page that was deleted this week after she was arrested, she listed Casablanca as a favourite place. Despite the unconventional living arrangements, an Irish immigration source said that their marriage appeared genuine and not to “secure residency in this jurisdiction”.
While in Marrakech in 2014 Redouane applied for an Irish visa under EU Treaty rights on the basis of marriage to an EU citizen and the next year was granted an EU card by Ireland. The couple moved back to London together and in October 2015 their daughter, Amina, was born in Romford, east London. Phillip Nowles, 46, who was in a relationship with Ms O’Leary for nine years before she married Redouane, said that she changed her name back to O’Leary on social media in the week of the attack.
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“She met him while we were together, I could see she had changed. She was unhappy with me in that last year,” said Mr Nowles, an upholsterer from Manchester. “They broke up this year, she was fed up with his controlling behaviour — he wanted their girl to become like him. To dress in Muslim clothes and believe in his ways.”
Redouane visited his estranged wife and their daughter shortly before the attack on Saturday night, which he carried out with Khuram Butt, 27, and Zaghba, who was able to get into the UK despite being arrested last year on his way to Syria, where he planned to fight for Isis. The Italian authorities said that he was on a terror watchlist and information had been uploaded to a database shared with Britain.
Zaghba, an Italian citizen of Moroccan descent, is thought to have lived in Ilford, east London, since 2015. Giuseppe Amato, the Bologna magistrate, said he “told [an] official he wanted to be a terrorist”, while a source confirmed he had Isis material on his phone. He was released and details of the case were uploaded to a terror database accessed by MI5, Italian officials said. He was never made a “subject of interest” by police or MI5, however.
Ms O’Leary was one of 13 people arrested after the attack and released without charge. She is in protective custody, according to Mr Nowles.
Friends said that she and Redouane split after a series of rows over his Islamist and homophobic views, according to The Sun. She told a friend: “He was always really selfish and I gave up so much for him. I was never going to convert and become a Muslim . . . He didn’t want Amina to eat pork or go to dance classes and I wasn’t having that.”
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Ms O’Leary accused him of beating and bullying her during their relationships, it has been reported. She and her daughter had recently moved into a housing unit for vulnerable mothers.
Sheikh Umar al-Qadri, an Irish imam who warned the European Commission about extremists in Dublin, warned against freedom of travel between Ireland and the UK.
“The ability to travel between the UK and Ireland without a passport is a real issue in terms of allowing radicals to slip through the net. I think we need to introduce strict border controls between northern Ireland and the UK. In this climate tighter security measures need to be introduced to stop the spread of hate,” he said.
Yesterday the president of the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors said that the gardaí did not have the training or resources to deal with a terrorist attack like the one in London. Frances Fitzgerald, the tánaiste and justice minister, rejected the claim. She held a security meeting with Nóirín O’Sullivan, the garda commissioner, yesterday.