Inside the London Bridge terror leader’s flat: Pram, baby’s swing chair and cot are pictured in the home Khuram Butt left to lead extremist massacre of eight innocent people
- Pictures show a normal home strewn with the mess of having young children
- Butt’s children’s toys are strewn across the room and twee art hangs on the walls
- The terror leader’s baby daughter was just a month old at the time of the attack
- Eight died when Butt and two others attacked with a van and knives in June 2017
The first pictures have emerged from inside the flat of the man who led terrorists on a killing spree at London Bridge, killing eight people.
The photographs show that the one main room of the London flat, which Khuram Butt shared with his wife, child, and newborn, is shocking in its simplicity and domesticity.
If there were signs at home of Butt’s extremism – and there must have been for his brother-in-law to have reported him to an anti-terror hotline – they are not visible among the children’s toys and scattered cushions of his home.
A wooden decorative heart hangs in the corner and on another wall – over the sofa of a man who drove a van into pedestrians then leapt out to kill with knives strapped to his wrists – a hand-sewn decoration reads: ‘Be happy. Be silly. Be kind.’
A picture of Khuram Butt’s living room is shocking in its domesticity: children’s toys and a pink pram dominate the room while a decoration reads ‘Be happy, be silly, be kind’
From other angles too the room looks like any other British home, complete with box of tea bags on top of the fridge. The sign on the door reads ‘It’s a Girl’: Butt’s wife had given birth to their daughter just a month before the London Bridge attack
A pink pram sits in one corner of the room and in the foreground it looks like toys are spilling out of a plastic tub, across the rug.
His toddler has a little desk in the far corner of the room, and a changing table and collapsible chairs take up much of the rest of the floor space.
Across the door of the room at a jaunty angle a festive banner declares ‘It’s a Girl’ – a reminder that Butt set out on his deathly jihadi rampage with his daughter just one month old.
The rest of the kitchen looks like any other British home, with a large box of PG Tips sitting on top of the fridge and a small revolving spice rack on the kitchen counter, with the detritus of daily life with two small children covering most flat surfaces.
Another photograph gives us a glimpse into a hallway where a pushchair has been parked tight to one wall, and a tiny pair of children’s shoes sit by the door frame.
And through the doorway into another room, possibly a child’s room, we can see a toy fire engine on the floor by a low bed.
Inside a child’s room in Butt’s flat a toy fire engine sits on the floor and a canopy over the bed
A glimpse through another doorway shows a pushchair parked tight by one wall and a pair of children’s blue shoe by the door
Butt was born in Pakistan but moved to the UK with his family aged eight on a visitor’s visa. In 2004 he was given indefinite leave to remain.
He went to schools in Forest Gate and Stratford in east London, where he gained 11 GCSEs.
He married Zahrah Rehman in December 2013 and they went on to have two children, with his daughter born just a month before the terror attack.
Today the inquest into the deaths of the eight people killed by Butt and two accomplices at London Bridge and Borough Market in June 2017 heard that confused calls from panicked members of the public during the London Bridge terror attacks left police thinking they may be dealing with a marauding Mumbai-style attack.
Police were receiving an ‘unprecedented’ number of calls, including reports from frightened members of the public who said there were gunshots at various London locations and hostages had been taken, according to Superintendent Ross McKibbin, of the Specialist Firearms Command.
He told the Old Bailey that, as the ordeal was still unfolding, there was ‘a potential’ that more than three suspects may have been involved and there could have been suicide devices in use.
Khuram Butt, 27, of Barking, east London, one of the London Bridge terrorists in June 2017
Butt pictured with his wife, who is pushing their child in the black pushchair seen in his flat
Eight people were killed and 48 injured after Khuram Butt, 27, Rachid Redouane, 30, and Youssef Zaghba, 22, launched a van and knife attack at London Bridge and the nearby Borough Market area on June 3 2017.
Xavier Thomas, 45, Christine Archibald, 30, Sara Zelenak, 21, Sebastien Belanger, 36, James McMullan, 32, Kirsty Boden, 28, Alexandre Pigeard, 26, and Ignacio Echeverria, 39, were all killed in the attack, which lasted less than 10 minutes.
The attackers were shot by firearms officers.
The inquest continues.
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