Page 8A
NATION/WORLD
East Oregonian
Tuesday, June 6, 2017
Alleged London attacker was a known radical Islamist
By DANICA KIRKA, PAISLEY
DODDS and LORI HINNANT
Associated Press
LONDON — One of the
men believed to have carried
out the deadly weekend
attack in central London was
a known radical Islamist who
was filmed unfurling a black
flag resembling the one used
by the Islamic State group
and raised the suspicion of
a neighbor after allegedly
trying to lure local youngsters
to join his jihadist campaign.
On Monday, British police
identified that man, Khuram
Shazad Butt, a 27-year-old
Pakistan-born Briton, as one
of the assailants, saying he
was known to authorities,
though they had no evidence
he was planning an attack.
They identified a second
attacker who had not aroused
suspicion prior to Saturday’s
rampage that killed seven
people.
As details about Butt
emerged, however, they
prompted
questions
of
whether he could have been
stopped sooner.
He had appeared in a docu-
mentary, “The Jihadis Next
Door,” that aired on British
television last year. Neighbors
identified Butt from the film’s
footage Monday, pointing to
a scene in which he is shown
participating in a provocative
prayer session at Regents
Park, near London’s biggest
mosque helping to display a
Khuram Shazad Butt and
Rachid Redouane
AP Photo/Tim Ireland
People attend a vigil for victims of Saturday’s attack in London Bridge, at Potter’s
Field Park in London on Monday.
black flag covered in white
Arabic lettering similar to the
one used by the Islamic State
group, which took responsi-
bility for the attack.
Butt is also seen in the
film sprawling on the lawn
and nodding as he listens to a
sermon in which the speaker
tells those gathered: “This
is not the real life, my dear
brothers. This is a passing
time for us.”
Butt’s apparent zealotry
led one neighbor, Erica
Gasparri, to contact police
about 18 months ago. The
42-year-old mother of three
was working at a local school
when she noticed Butt, who
was also known as Abu
Mohamed, meeting with local
children and trying to draw
them into his radicalism.
“It was wrong what he was
doing,” Gasparri said. “He
kept talking about the Islamic
State. I got very angry.”
Salaudeen
Jailabdeen,
who lived near Butt, said the
alleged assailant had once
been ejected from a local
mosque for interrupting an
imam. Another neighbor,
Michael Mimbo, said he saw
the van used in the attack near
his home on Saturday, but
didn’t see who was behind
the wheel. He said the vehicle
was seen going the wrong
way down a one-way street
and was later seen speeding
off, followed closely by a
small red car.
The second alleged attacker
was identified by police
as Rachid Redouane, who
alternately used the surname
Elkhdar, and claimed to be
Moroccan and Libyan. He
used two different birthdates
that would make him either 25
or 30, authorities said.
Police have not yet
released the identity of the
third person involved in
carrying out the attack on
London Bridge, where the van
swerved into pedestrians, and
in nearby Borough Market,
where the knife-wielding
assailants slashed and stabbed
anyone in their path. Besides
the dead, dozens more were
wounded by the men, who
wore fake suicide vests to
make themselves look even
more imposing.
All three were ultimately
shot and killed by police.
Twelve others taken into
custody have since been
released.
All of it happened in just
eight minutes, and though
police have won praise for
their response, it has led to a
political fight certain to domi-
nate the waning days before
Thursday’s national elections.
The campaign roared back
into public view Monday after
a one-day hiatus, with Prime
Minister Theresa May and
Labour Party leader Jeremy
Corbyn trading blame over
one another’s security stances.
May served as home
secretary for six years before
becoming prime minister last
year, a period in which the
number of police dropped by
about 20,000 officers. That
fact provided a line of attack
for Corbyn, who called on
May to resign even as he said
the best remedy was to vote
her out.
“There’s an election on
Thursday, that’s the chance,”
he said, citing an “appalling”
cut in police staffing levels.
“We’re calling for a restoration
of police numbers, and there’s
a call being made for her to go,
because of what she’s done on
the police numbers.”
May said she has protected
police budgets and increased
the number of armed officers
and matched Corbyn’s finger-
pointing with some of her
own, saying her opponent
wasn’t fit to safeguard Britain
at a time of heightened threat.
“We have given increased
powers to the police to be
able to deal with terrorists,
powers which Jeremy Corbyn
has boasted he has always
opposed,” she said.
BRIEFLY
Trump won’t seek to block
Comey testimony
Bill Cosby goes on trial, his
legacy and freedom at stake
Legal experts to Trump:
Put down the Twitter
WASHINGTON (AP) — President
Donald Trump will not assert executive
privilege to block fired FBI Director James
Comey from testifying on Capitol Hill, the
White House said Monday, setting the stage
for a dramatic public airing of the former top
law enforcement official’s dealings with the
commander in chief.
White House spokeswoman Sarah
Huckabee Sanders said
the president’s power
to invoke executive
privilege is “well-
established.” But she
said Trump wanted to
allow for a “swift and
thorough examination
of the facts” related to
Comey’s ouster and the
multiple investigations
Comey
into his campaign’s
possible ties to Russia.
Comey is scheduled to testify Thursday
before the Senate intelligence committee.
His appearance will mark his first public
comments since he was abruptly fired by the
president on May 9.
White House officials had weighed
trying to block Comey by arguing that his
discussions with the president pertained
to national security and that there was an
expectation of privacy. However, officials
ultimately concluded that the optics of taking
that step would be worse than the risk of
letting the former FBI director testify freely.
Legal experts have also said that the
president likely undermined his ability
to assert executive privilege by publicly
discussing his dealings with Comey in
tweets and interviews.
Lawmakers in both parties have urged
Trump to allow Comey to testify publicly.
On Sunday, Sen. Roy Blunt, a Missouri
Republican and a member of the intelligence
committee, said the president would be “better
served by getting all this information out.”
“Sooner rather than later, let’s find
out what happened and bring this to a
conclusion,” Blunt said on “Fox News
Sunday.” ‘’You don’t do that I think
by invoking executive privilege on a
conversation you had apparently with
nobody else in the room.”
NORRISTOWN, Pa. (AP) — Bill Cosby
went on trial Monday on charges he drugged
and sexually assaulted a woman more than
a decade ago, with prosecutors immediately
introducing evidence the 79-year-old TV star
once known as America’s Dad had done it
before to someone else.
The prosecution’s opening witness was
not the person Cosby is charged with abusing,
but another woman,
who broke down in tears
as she testified that the
comedian violated her
in the mid-1990s at a
hotel bungalow in Los
Angeles.
Cosby is on trial on
charges he assaulted
Andrea Constand, a
former employee of
Cosby
Temple University’s
basketball program, at
his suburban Philadelphia mansion in 2004.
His good-guy reputation already in ruins, he
could get 10 years in prison if convicted.
Prosecutor Kristen Feden, in her opening
statement, noted the “Cosby Show” star
previously admitted under oath that he gave
Constand pills and touched her genitals as
she lay on his couch.
“She couldn’t say no,” Feden said. “She
can’t move, she can’t talk. Completely
paralyzed. Frozen. Lifeless.”
Cosby attorney Brian McMonagle
countered by attacking what he said were
inconsistencies in Constand’s story, disputed
that Constand was incapacitated and made
the case that she and Cosby had a romantic
relationship.
He said Constand initially told police that
she and Cosby did not speak after their 2004
encounter, when, in fact, phone records show
the two talked 72 times, with 53 of those
calls initiated by Constand.
Constand, 44, of the Toronto area, is
expected to take the stand this week and tell
her story in public for the first time.
The trial’s first witness was Kelly
Johnson, who worked for one of Cosby’s
agents at the William Morris Agency.
Johnson, of Atlanta, described an encounter
she said took place in 1996 at the Hotel
Bel-Air when she was in her mid-30s.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Memo from
legal experts to President Donald Trump
on resurrecting his stalled travel ban: Put
down the Twitter.
Trump’s 140-character musings Monday
may have undercut his own efforts to
persuade the Supreme Court to reinstate his
revised travel ban, which Trump called a
“watered-down, politically correct” version
of what he’d originally sought. Just as
Trump’s Justice Department is arguing the
ban doesn’t target Muslims, legal experts
said the president seems to be suggesting
the opposite.
Those who oppose the travel ban said
Trump’s Tweetstorm, ironically, helps
their case. Neal Katyal, the former acting
solicitor general representing Hawaii in
its lawsuit against the ban, said it was as if
Trump was his co-counsel.
“We don’t need the help but will take
it!” Katyal wrote in his own Twitter post.
The courts in January halted Trump’s
initial order, which banned travel from
seven majority-Muslim countries and
indefinitely halted entry to Syrian refugees.
Trump begrudgingly scaled back the order
by removing Iraq from the list and making
the Syria refugee ban only temporary, but
that order was blocked by the courts, too.
At the heart of the legal wrangling is
whether Trump’s proposed ban violates
the Constitution by discriminating on the
basis of religion. As a candidate, Trump
called for a “Muslim ban,” comments
that came back to haunt him as president
when the courts determined that even
his scaled-down order was “rooted in
religious animus and intended to bar
Muslims from this country.”
Not so, the Justice Department has
argued, insisting the temporary ban
is based on credible national security
concerns unrelated to religion, and his
campaign statements should be ignored.
But Stephen Vladeck, a University of
Texas law professor, said Trump was
making that argument much less tenable
by calling the revised order “politically
correct.”
“These tweets are basically winking at
his supporters to say, obviously, I’m only
doing this so that the courts will uphold
it,” Vladeck said. “It makes it harder to
argue this is not a Muslim ban, and more
importantly, it makes it harder to argue
that the president’s statements should be
irrelevant.”
Report suggests Russia hackers
breached voting software firm
WASHINGTON (AP) — Russian
hackers attacked at least one U.S. voting
software supplier days before last year’s
presidential election, according to a
government intelligence report leaked
Monday that suggests election-related
hacking penetrated further into U.S. voting
systems than previously known.
The classified National Security Agency
report, which was published online by The
Intercept, does not say whether the hacking
had any effect on election results. But it
says Russian military intelligence attacked
a U.S. voting software company and sent
spear-phishing emails to more than 100
local election officials at the end of October
or beginning of November.
U.S. intelligence agencies declined to
comment.
However, the Justice Department
announced Monday it had charged a
government contractor in Georgia with
leaking a classified report containing “Top
Secret level” information to an online news
organization. The report the contractor
allegedly leaked is dated May 5, the same
date as the document The Intercept posted
online.
The document said Russian military
intelligence “executed cyber espionage
operations against a named U.S. company
in August 2016 evidently to obtain
information on elections-related software
and hardware solutions, according to
information that became available in April
2017.”
The hackers are believed to have
then used data from that operation to
create a new email account to launch a
spear-phishing campaign targeting U.S.
local government organizations, the
document said. “Lastly, the actors send
test emails to two non-existent accounts
ostensibly associated with absentee
balloting, presumably with the purpose of
creating those accounts to mimic legitimate
services.”
OPENINGS FOR OPERATORS OF
NEW RETAIL LIQUOR LOCATIONS
OLCC is recruiting applicants for new retail liquor locations. The open recruitment
process is a market-driven effort to improve customer convenience by expanding
retail liquor locations with a measured, but consistent amount of growth.
The Oregon Liquor Control Commission is accepting applications and aiming to add new
retail liquor locations in the following counties:
Baker County
Crook County
Deschutes County
Gilliam County
Grant County
Hood River County
Jefferson County
Morrow County
Sherman County
Umatilla County
Union County
Wallowa County
Wasco County
Wheeler County
Applicants are evaluated on background, knowledge and work experience in:
• Retail business management
• Inventory/cash management
• Retail sales and operation
• Customer service/public relations in a retail environment
• Financial ability to open and operate a retail liquor location
A detailed business plan will be required as part of the application process.
Join us today!
For additional information on open recruitment for new retail liquor locations and application information, visit:
http://www.oregon.gov/OLCC/LIQUORSTORES/Pages/liquorsalesoutlets_openrecruitment.aspx
Questions can be directed to OLCC.RetailServices@oregon.gov or call 503-872-5020 (toll-free 1-800-426-
2004, Dept # 62). Provide your name, email address and phone number. Applications can also be picked up
at 9079 SE McLoughlin Blvd., Portland, OR 97222.
An application with a business plan must be received at OLCC’s main office in Portland at the above
address, by 5:00 PM, Monday, July 31st, 2017. Applications received after this deadline will not be accepted.
Additional open recruitments for these areas and others in the state may occur in the future.
Apply Online:
Text for more info: