United Kingdom police name third man behind London terror attack

Police have revealed the chilling contents found inside the van used to mow down pedestrians in the London Bridge terror attack.

Commander Dean Haydon, head of Scotland Yard’s counterterrorism unit, said that the trio switched to a rented Renault van when the ringleader Khuram Butt’s payment for the heavier vehicle failed.

Last July, a 31-year-old Tunisian extremist rammed a 19-tonne truck through a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in the French Riviera city of Nice, killing 86 people and injuring more than 400.

But the payment by the gang’s leader, Khuram Butt, failed to go through.

“When I come back to Butt trying getting hold of a 7.5 tonne lorry – the effect could have been even worse”.

Trucks have been used in a string of terror attacks in Europe over the past year.

It comes as police continue to appeal for information on the attackers and their movements, following revelations that they held a midnight meeting at a gym in Ilford five days before launching the attack.

The Metropolitan police have released photos of the attackers’ 12-inch ceramic knives.

Police have discovered equipment for making petrol bombs, plastic bottles and duct tape for constructing fake suicide bomb belts, and an ID card for Redouane.

He then went on a stabbing spree along with Rachid Redouane, 30, of Moroccan and Libyan descent and Moroccan-Italian Youssef Zaghba, 22, in Borough Market.

The surveillance camera footage shows the first police vehicle rolling forward as the attackers lunge at a man to stab him during the late night attacks. At 1838 GMT they left and two hours later the van reached London Bridge which they drove along twice before targeting pedestrians on the sidewalk on their third run.

Three people died after being hit by the van and five were stabbed to death in the attack led by Butt.

Some of the items include Molotov cocktails in wine bottles as well as blow torches and there is no doubt in anyone’s mind that the attackers had planned to kill many more innocent people on that fateful Saturday night.

Inside the van, gravel, chairs and a red suitcase can be seen, which detectives believe were props for a cover story the terrorists used to justify the rental to their families.

“There was no evidence uncovered of any attack-planning in relation to him”, Haydon said. It was then driven to Zaghba’s address in Barking, East London, and then toured London before the fatal attack was launched just before 10pm.

The attack, and prior attacks in Manchester and near Parliament in London, have prompted Prime Minister Theresa May to call for tougher counterterrorism laws even if it means changing human rights protections. He asked firms to report people they are suspicious of who are trying to hire vehicles or trucks for “no particular reason”.

Butt hired the van used in the attack from a B&Q store in Romford in the morning of the attack, it said. Twelve people who were detained in connection to the attack have been released without charge, police say. “How did they know each other?”

Relatives have also named Spanish bank worker Ignacio Echeverria, 39, and James McMullan, 32, from Hackney, as being among those killed, while a body that was found in the River Thames near Limehouse on Tuesday evening is believed to be that of missing 45-year-old Xavier Thomas, from France. The other two had no criminal record in the United Kingdom and inquiries found none in countries they had links to.