London attack mastermind Khuram Shazad Butt was radicalized despite UK upbringing

The London Metropolitan Police has been gradually releasing more and more information on the three London attackers. As of now, we have a fair bit of information on Khuram Shazad Butt, the Pakistani origin attacker who is now believed to be the mastermind behind the attack.

So who was Khruam Butt? Our investigation and inputs received from the London police authorities reveal that Butt was born in Jhelum, Pakistan.

He came to Britain as a child when his parents sought asylum. He grew up in East London and spoke with a very distinct East London accent.

A trained weightlifter, he was known in the neighbourhood and to his friends as “Abz". However, he preferred to be known as Abu Zeitoun and  also used the alias Rachid Elkhdar.

With a National Vocational Qualification in business administration and a diploma in teaching English to adults, it may appear strange to many of us as to why he took to this path.

Despite growing up in London, as most Pakistani origin youngsters  he had an arranged marriage. The day he drove the van on London bridge with the intention of mowing down people, he had left at home his wife, a son aged about three and a recently born baby.

There were enough signs to show that Butt was a potential terrorist. He is known to have been a one time a supporter of the banned Islamist group al-Muhajiroun. Subsequently, he became part of a radical group in East London who ideologically supported ISIS.

In  2015, Butt was accused of trying to indoctrinate children to convert to Islam. It was around this time that the police opened their investigation into Butt. In May 2017, he was noticed campaigning in the streets of East London urging Muslims not to participate in the upcoming general election.

Among the close friends and associates of Butt include the fundamentalist cleric Anjem Chaudhry, who is currently serving a jail sentence and extremist preacher Abu Haleema.

Butt is a classic case of extremist Muslim youth who are becoming radicalised from a young age, worldwide, say observers.

Irrespective of the environment that they grow up in, they imbibe the extremist Sunni ideology of their country of origin, in this case Pakistan.

As a result, while democratic institutions are seen as retrograde,  the call for jihad against supporters of democratic credentials is viewed by such youth as a natural course of action.

"We need to realise that this dangerous trend cannot be tackled only in the West. The root of this extremist ideology, whether in Pakistan or Syria needs to be attacked and in a sustained manner these jihad manufacturing units shut down. Butt is only the symptom, we need to root out the disease," says an UK-based expert on Islamic terrorism.