Counter-extremism group says London attacker assaulted one of its members last year

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A counter-extremism organization says it warned police about the alleged ringleader of the London attack a year ago when he assaulted one of its members.

The Quilliam organization says Khuram Shazad Butt, who police believe was the ringleader of Saturday's deadly attack, was arrested earlier this year for allegedly throwing punches and lunging at de-radicalization expert Usama Hasan. In the end, he was let off with a caution. 

"What this tells me is there has been a major problem here," Haras Rafiq, CEO of the London-based organization, told As It Happens host Carol Off.

"Had they prioritized him a lot higher, and he was actually charged with the crime and convicted of assaulting Dr. Hassan, he may have been in jail and he may not have carried out the London attacks."

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Butt, 27, was a very public Islamic radical who had appeared on a TV documentary titled The Jihadis Next Door. He was among three attackers police say are responsible for the Saturday night van and knife attack that left seven people dead, including a Canadian woman. 

Scotland Yard has said Butt was investigated by officers in 2015, but they found no evidence he was planning an attack.

Rafiq said that in July 2016, Butt attacked Islamic scholar Hasan at an Eid celebration to mark the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Hasan — a former jihadist who now works to de-radicalize young men — was there with his wife, parents and nine- year-old son.

"They were minding their own business until this one particular chap, who happened to be Khuram Butt, was looking at him quite aggressively," Rafiq said.

"So Dr. Hasan greeted him with the Muslim greeting of peace, As-salamu alaykum, and he refused to reply, and then started initially verbally assaulting him."

After shouting at Hasan and calling him a traitor, Rafiq said Butt "physically went for him, attacked him."

"A scuffle broke out and there were lots of people there and the people intervened and stopped the scuffle. [Butt] carried on with the abuse, et cetera, then got away from the people that were holding him and went for Dr. Hasan again."

When it was all over, Rafiq says Quilliam reported the incident to Metropolitan Police and British counter-terrorism officials.

So when police revealed Butt as one of the London attackers, Rafiq was shocked.

"That's when we needed to get to the bottom of what had happened, why this guy wasn't picked up last July," he said.

Police told Quilliam they arrested Butt for the attack six months later, but let him off with a caution, Rafiq said. 

"When we tell them that this guy is violent, he's an extremist, and he is a problem for our society, he may become a terrorist, then really I think that they should have prioritized him a lot higher," Rafiq said.

British authorities are tracking close to 3,000 people for links to extremism.

"They do a very, very good job, but they're under-resourced, they're understaffed," Rafiq said. "They can't keep up with every single person who's not deemed to be of high risk at that exact moment in time because they have to priortitize."

Metropolitan Police did not respond to As It Happens' request for comment.

Security and police resources have been a hot-button issue in Britain, which is heading into a general election on Thursday,

Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn has lambasted British Prime Minister Theresa May for cutting police numbers by 20,000 when she was interior minister between 2010 and 2016.

Corbyn himself has faced repeated questioning over his own past views and actions on security matters. He has been criticised for voting against counter-terrorism legislation and expressing reservations about police responding to attacks with "shoot-to-kill" tactics. Since the attack, he has said he fully supported the actions of the police.

Corbyn has also faced fierce criticism for past sympathies with the Palestinian group Hamas, Lebanon's Hezbollah, and Sinn Fein, the political arm of the Irish Republican Army, a guerrilla group that waged a violent struggle to take Northern Ireland out of the U.K.

For his part, Rafiq says more police on the ground would not have prevented the London attack.

Quilliam is instead calling for the establishment of a counter-extremism co-ordinator to serve under the prime minister and co-ordinate anti-terrorism efforts across departments. 

"I think the under-resourcing really, is in the intelligence service, in the monitoring," he said. "That's where we need the investment."

With files from Reuters and Associated Press