The suspect in the Finsbury Park mosque attack allegedly made abusive and aggressive comments about a pro-Palestinian rally that took place in London hours before he drove into a crowd of worshippers.
Darren Osborne is said to have made the remarks about the al-Quds Day march, which is often targeted by far-right activists, the night before he drove from Cardiff to London.
Police are using CCTV cameras and automatic numberplate recognition technology to track Osborne’s movements from Cardiff to London.
They will be able to work out if he was at or near the al-Quds rally, which is organised by the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC) and took place on Sunday afternoon in Westminster, before he headed north-east to Finsbury Park.
It is also now believed that Osborne, 47, hired the van used in the attack several days before leaving for London and slept in it the night before he departed.
Police in south Wales have confirmed they found the father of four sleeping in the van after a neighbour phoned them. They judged that no offence had been committed and took no action.
Further details have emerged of Osborne’s erratic behaviour in the days and weeks before the attack. Some neighbours said that though he visited the family home in Pentwyn, Cardiff, where his partner and four children lived, he did not stay overnight. He sometimes slept in a tent nearby, they claimed.
According to witnesses at Finsbury Park, Osborne shouted: “I want to kill all Muslims” as he drove a van into a crowd of worshippers in the early hours of Monday morning. One person has died and 11 were injured. Osborne was arrested on suspicion of commission, preparation or instigation of terrorism including murder and attempted murder.
Camera phone footage showed him being captured by worshippers, who attacked him as he screamed: “Kill me.” When he was eventually arrested and loaded into the back of a police van in handcuffs, he gestured to the crowd.
There is no immediate evidence that Osborne was an active member of a far-right organisation. He was not known to the security services, according to Ben Wallace, the security minister.
But police are continuing to search the family home and investigate his use of computers. Detectives have been granted a warrant to hold Osborne until 12.54am on Saturday 24 June.
Osborne appears to have a Twitter account, which he has never used to send his own tweets, instead monitoring 32 other users, including Paul Golding and Jayda Fransen, the leaders of the far-right party Britain First. Its mission statement says: “We will restore Christianity as the bedrock and foundation of our national life as it has been for the last one thousand years.” Golding declined to comment.
It is thought Osborne hired the van from a company in south Wales towards the end of last week.
One neighbour said he had seen the van parked on a road near the family home from Thursday or Friday last week. He said: “Darren used to park his old cars here because there’s not much space on his street. Then this van appeared. As soon as I saw what happened in Finsbury Park I recognised the van.”
Mary Corke, whose home looks on to the road, said she had seen the van appear three or four days before the attack. “I looked out one time and he was in the van on the phone. Next morning the van had gone,” she said.
Osborne’s neighbour Edward Gardiner said he saw a man sleeping in a van matching the description of the one used in the Finsbury Park attack late on Saturday night. Gardiner said: “I saw a van with this man lying across the three seats. I went to give him a shake. He just grunted, but his breath smelled of alcohol. I reported it to the police.”
A South Wales police spokesman said: “At 12.27am on Sunday 18 June South Wales police responded to a call made to the non-emergency 101 number following a report of an insecure van parked on a street.
“Officers attended, a male was asleep inside the vehicle, which showed no signs of having been driven recently. The officers’ assessment was that no offences were disclosed.”
Neighbours in Pentwyn said that over the weekend, Osborne had called a 12-year-old Muslim neighbour an “inbred”.
On Saturday night, Osborne was in the Hollybush pub near his home complaining about Muslims – and specifically about the al-Quds march.
The pub manager, Andy Parker, said: “The gentleman came in and was very political with everyone he spoke to. I did not like one bit of it so asked him to leave. But he was pretty surly so the boys stood in and told him in no uncertain terms to go.”
A well-placed source alleged to the Guardian that Osborne had specifically spoken about the rally.
The far-right English Defence League has targeted pro-Palestinian demonstrators during previous al-Quds rallies. The IHRC, which organises the march, said that before this year’s event it had been made aware of social media postings threatening violence, including one individual who threatened to drive a van into the march. There is no suggestion this was Osborne.
Before the march the organisers put out a statement saying the event would go ahead regardless. It said: “Despite the misinformation and lies currently being put out and the demonisation of the event that is taking place, the annual al-Quds Day march will still be going ahead.” They also flagged up concerns to the Metropolitan police. An IHRC spokesman said on Tuesday there had been tension but no major incident.
Osborne was brought up in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, where members of his family still live.
In a statement his family said he had been “troubled for a long time”. It added: “We are massively shocked. It’s unbelievable. It still hasn’t really sunk in. We are devastated for the families. Our hearts go out to the people who have been injured.”
