London Bridge attacker Khuram Butt filmed washing knife and wiping it on beard after stabbing victims in bar

The ringleader of the London Bridge terror attack calmly washed his knife and wiped it on his beard in a “chilling gesture” as two victims bled on the ground.

Inquests into the attack on 3 June 2017 were played graphic footage of Khuram Butt, Rachid Redouane and Youssef Zaghba stabbing and slashing anyone they could reach around Borough Market.

A CCTV camera inside the Black and Blue restaurant filmed the moment the attackers forced the locked glass doors open and burst inside.

Millwall fan Roy Larner was sitting at a table by the bar and could be seen exchanging words with the terrorists before Redouane stabbed him repeatedly in the chest.

Mr Larner was seen standing and trying to fight the attackers, but was then stabbed again.

The Old Bailey heard that Butt then ordered journalist Geoff Ho to lie down on the floor, and then stabbed him in the throat.

Footage played to the court showed Zaghba going behind the bar to drink from the tap.

Butt then calmly washed his knife and wiped it on his beard in what Jonathan Hough QC, the counsel to the inquests, called a “chilling gesture” as the two men lay injured on the floor metres away.

Previously, Redouane had been filmed pausing his rampage to tie his shoelaces.

The three attackers were shot dead by armed police 10 minutes after they hit the first victim with their van on London Bridge.

Even as three officers got out of their car and took aim, footage played to the Old Bailey showed members of the public standing metres away throwing objects at the terrorists.

The attackers killed eight victims and injured 48 more in the rampage, which was the third terror attack to strike the UK in little over two months.

Gareth Patterson QC, a lawyer representing six of the victims’ families, told the court they had filled the van with bags of industrial gravel – possibly to make it heavier and deadlier.

He said the attackers “acted with a degree of discipline” and had taped identical 12in kitchen knives to their wrists and donned fake suicide belts.

Footage showed them moving as a trio, walking and sometimes running in a cluster and attacking victims as a group.

Mr Patterson said that after more than 50 knife attacks, the trio were still “acting as a team, three on one to the very end”.

The lawyer told the inquest that they had trained at the Ummah Fitness Centre in Ilford and were “trying to cause maximum injury” by stabbing victims in the throat, neck and upper chest.

The only person the terrorists are known to have encountered without attacking was an unidentified man seen briefly speaking to Redouane by Borough Market.

Silent CCTV footage showed the pair briefly speaking to another before the man was allowed to walk on unharmed, turning to say something to the attackers as he leaves.

“There’s clearly some form of discussion, we don’t know what was said and despite witness appeals the man never came forward,” said Det Supt Becky Riggs, from the Metropolitan Police counterterror command.

The attackers’ deaths will be examined before a jury, in separate inquests coming after an estimated eight weeks of hearings for their victims.

Christine Archibald, 30, and Xavier Thomas, 45, were hit by the terrorists’ van before they crashed.

Alexandre Pigeard, 26, Sara Zelenak, 21, Kirsty Boden, 28, Sebastien Belanger, 36, James McMullan, 32, and Ignacio Echeverria, 39, were all stabbed to death.