"Ireland’s Jihadis", a new TV documentary show has described how Rachid Redouane, who was responsible for the London Bridge attacks of 2017, went under the radar while living in Ireland.
A startling new television documentary shows how London terrorist Rachid Redouane remained under the radar in Ireland before his attack on London Bridge in June of 2017 that killed eight and injured 48.
"Ireland’s Jihadis", which was airred on Virgin Media One on Wednesday night, shows how Redouane and his former wife posed as a happily-married couple looking for an apartment in Dublin.
Irish Independent investigative journalist Paul Williams, a commentator on the documentary, has told of seeing a leaflet portraying the couple starting a new life in Ireland. The leaflet was distributed around the north side of Dublin when the couple were looking for an apartment to rent.
It said Charisse Anne O’Leary from London and Redouane from Morocco were two years married and were starting a new life in Ireland and were seeking a studio apartment and employment.
Charisse Anne O’Leary.
The documentary says O’Leary had no idea at the time that she was being used by Redouane to gain residency status in the EU.
He had been refused asylum on several occasions in Britain where he had a criminal conviction. He moved to Ireland in 2012 and he and O’Leary married in a Dublin registry office on November 7 that year.
In 2015, still in Dublin, he applied for and was granted residency status which allowed him move unchecked anywhere in the European Union.
They then moved to London where, some time after their child’s birth, O’Leary and Redouane separated. She claimed he was abusive. She was completely unaware of his involvement in ISIL extremist activities.
In June last year, Redouane and two other attackers, Youseff Zaghba and Khuram Shazad Butt, crashed a van into a shopfront near London Bridge and then began stabbing people. They killed eight and injured 48 before police arrived and shot dead the three men.
Leading international security and intelligence academic Dr. Ed Burke revealed that the Irish authorities did not at the time have access to databases which would have alerted them to monitor Redouane.
The senior garda in charge of Ireland’s Security and Intelligence Section, Assistant Commissioner Michael O'Sullivan, said that since 2016 Ireland has had access to more extensive international databases.
He said, “We have brought in improvements. We introduced the Interpol Find System here to all airports and ports in November of 2016, which is a database based in Lyon that is searched at points of entry for over four million fraudulent travel documents including passports.
“Next year, we will be signed up and part of the Schengen Information System. That information system has over four billion checks carried out annually that will include persons wanted in other jurisdictions, persons of interest to law enforcement in our security services in other jurisdictions.
They're massive improvements.”
Here is the documentary in full:
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