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London Attacker Identified as Khalid Masood London Attacker Khalid Masood Had 20-Year Police Record
(about 3 hours later)
LONDON The Islamic State claimed responsibility on Thursday for the deadly attack outside the British Parliament, as Prime Minister Theresa May described the assailant as a British-born man whom the country’s domestic intelligence agency had investigated for connections to violent extremism. BIRMINGHAM, England A 52-year-old man with a long criminal record who been had been investigated for ties to violent extremism carried out the deadly attack outside the British Parliament, the authorities announced on Thursday, as the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the assault.
The London police identified him on Thursday afternoon as Khalid Masood, 52, who had a long criminal history but no terrorism convictions. He had been living recently around Birmingham, England, where the vehicle used in the attack was rented. The police released few other details about him. Details about the man, Khalid Masood, a native of England who recently lived in the city of Birmingham, emerged as the government worked to project normalcy and calm nerves the day after the attack, which took the lives of a police officer, a British schoolteacher and an American tourist and injured more than 40 people.
Hours earlier, addressing lawmakers who only a day earlier had been under lockdown, Mrs. May said the attacker was “a peripheral figure” who had been examined by MI5, Britain’s domestic counterintelligence agency, but who had not been “part of the current intelligence picture.” “Yesterday, an act of terrorism tried to silence our democracy,” Prime Minister Theresa May told Parliament, addressing colleagues who a day earlier had been placed on lockdown. “We are not afraid, and our resolve will never waver in the face of terrorism.” She called the violence “an attack on free people everywhere.”
Mrs. May said that officials were not ready to release the man’s name, but she added that “there was no prior evidence of his intent or of the plot” and that “our working assumption is that the attacker was inspired by Islamist ideology.” Parliament observed a minute of silence for the victims on Thursday morning, while crowds gathered at Trafalgar Square in the evening for a memorial vigil. Flags flew at half-staff above the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police and Parliament. Queen Elizabeth II expressed sympathy for the victims.
Barely an hour after Mrs. May finished speaking, the Islamic State group issued a statement on the messaging app Telegram, declaring that the attacker was a “soldier” who “carried out the operation in response to appeals” to fight Western powers involved in military operations in the Middle East. At the United Nations, where the Security Council also observed a minute of silence, Britain’s foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, said, “The world is united to defeat the people who launched this attack and to defeat their bankrupt and odious ideology.” He added: “Our values are superior. Our view of the world is better and more generous and our will is stronger.”
The British authorities raided six properties across the country on Thursday, detaining eight people in London and in Birmingham, in central England, as they pressed ahead with a fast-moving investigation. But even as the British capital returned fairly quickly to its daily rhythms, and as Parliament resumed business starting with a debate on trade policy police officers were trying to learn about Mr. Masood and whether they had missed signs of his radicalization.
The authorities emphasized that they believed that the assailant had acted alone, and that they did not expect any further attacks; Mrs. May said that the nation’s threat level would remain “severe,” meaning that an attack was likely, and would not be raised to “critical,” which is used to signal an imminent attack. He was born on Dec. 25, 1964, in Kent, in southeastern England, and recently lived near Birmingham, historically known for its automotive industry and now home to many South Asian and Caribbean immigrants and their children. It was there, in the Spring Hill neighborhood, that Mr. Masood rented from an Enterprise branch the Hyundai Tucson that he used in the attack.
“Yesterday, an act of terrorism tried to silence our democracy,” Mrs. May said. “We are not afraid, and our resolve will never waver in the face of terrorism.” Mr. Masood had a record of convictions, stretching from 1983 to 2003, for assault, weapons possession and violations of public order. But he was not the subject of any current investigation, and “there was no prior intelligence about his intent to mount a terrorist attack,” the London police said.
She added that the assault was “an attack on free people everywhere.” In remarks to lawmakers, before the police identified Mr. Masood, Mrs. May said the attacker was “a peripheral figure” whom MI5, Britain’s domestic counterintelligence agency, had examined for links to violent extremism. She added that he was not “part of the current intelligence picture,” that “there was no prior evidence of his intent or of the plot” and that “our working assumption is that the attacker was inspired by Islamist ideology.”
Consistent with the multicultural character of London, the victims of the attack three dead and around 40 others wounded included 12 Britons, at least four South Koreans, three French schoolchildren, two Greeks, two Romanians, two Americans and one citizen each from China, Germany, Ireland, Italy. The authorities emphasized that they thought the assailant had acted alone, and that they did not expect any further attacks; Mrs. May said the nation’s threat level would remain “severe,” meaning an attack was likely, and would not be raised to “critical,” which is used to signal an imminent attack.
The police also said that they had lowered the death toll in the attack on Wednesday to four from five, including the assailant. He drove his vehicle over pedestrians on Westminster Bridge and then fatally stabbed a police constable, Keith Palmer, 48, before being shot dead by the police. The two civilians killed were Kurt W. Cochran, an American tourist in his 50s, and Aysha Frade, 43, a British teacher. The authorities raided six properties across the country on Thursday, detaining eight people in London and in Birmingham. On Hagley Road, a commercial street in Birmingham, several people were arrested on Wednesday night in a raid on an apartment above a Persian restaurant. It was not clear what connection they had to Mr. Masood.
A moment of silence was observed in London at 9:33 a.m. on Thursday, and a 6 p.m. vigil was to be held in Trafalgar Square. But even as the city returned fairly quickly to normal, and as Parliament resumed normal business starting with a debate on trade policy police officers were homing in on Mr. Masood. “Birmingham is a city that historically has lots of issues and problems,” Raffaello Pantucci, the director of international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute, a defense think tank, said in a phone interview.
He was born on Dec. 25, 1964, in Kent, in southeastern England, and was recently living in the Birmingham area, according to the London police. The city has a long history of connections with radicalism. It was home to Rashid Rauf, a liaison to Al Qaeda and a main suspect in a plot to blow up trans-Atlantic airliners in 2006, who was killed in 2008 in an American airstrike in northern Pakistan. Last year, security services foiled a bomb plot in Birmingham, linked to extremists.
“Masood was not the subject of any current investigations and there was no prior intelligence about his intent to mount a terrorist attack,” the London police said. However, he had a record of convictions, stretching from 1983 to 2003, for assault, weapons possession and violations of public order. Investigators have also looked into whether Abdelhamid Abbaoud, a ringleader of the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, has spent time there. Mohamed Abrini, a suspect in the Paris attacks and another attack last March in Brussels, did; investigators found photos from Birmingham on his phone, Mr.Pantucci said.
It was not immediately clear whether the London police knew that MI5 had looked into Mr. Masood. Roy Ramm, who spent nearly three decades in the Metropolitan Police and was the commander of specialist operations, said that British intelligence authorities would communicate with their international counterparts to establish whether the suspect was part of a network, and also to determine if he was on their radar at all, had left a travel footprint or was known to have associated with radical individuals.
Before Mrs. May spoke, the secretary of state for international trade, Liam Fox, began taking questions on trade issues by stating that it would be “not violence, hatred or division, but decency, goodness and tolerance that prevails in our country.” For years, the police have been able to keep close tabs on potential Islamist radicals and terrorists, including Anjem Choudary, one of the most outspoken and effective hate preachers in Britain. But such efforts have become more challenging in recent years, experts say.
Speaking outside the chamber, Ed Miliband, a former leader of the Labour Party, said that the mood had been one of “shock and determination, and also admiration for the job that the security people are doing.”
The reaction, he added, showed that “humanity is stronger than the cowardice and depravity of the person who did this.”
Signs of the chaos from the day before were still in evidence. In the area where the fatal stabbing took place, just inside the gates of Parliament, a small blue tent had been erected over the site of the crime scene as the police continued forensic and other investigations.
The area around Parliament Square remained cordoned off, and a fire truck with flashing lights could be seen parked outside the Palace of Westminster, while parts of two of London’s main roads — Whitehall and Millbank — were off limits. The security cordon extended to Trafalgar Square, covering the entirety of Whitehall, the heart of Britain’s government, including the prime minister’s office, the Finance Ministry and the Foreign Office.
Runners and cyclists took detours, while employees of Parliament and government ministries, including the Ministry of Defense, were allowed through the cordon only after identification checks by the police.
Large thoroughfares typically packed with traffic during the morning rush hour were largely deserted, with roads like the Mall, which connects Trafalgar Square to Buckingham Palace, being used only by bicycles.
Among those headed to work was Michael Torrance, 39, a House of Lords official. Clutching a box of tea bags in his hand — his office had quickly run out as politicians and their staff members were on lockdown the day before — Mr. Torrance said that the full magnitude of the attack on the Parliament area had not yet sunk in.
“Everyone was in various states of shock,” he said. “Looking at it in context, up and until the late ’70s, it was a frequent target of I.R.A. attacks.”
“Without sounding too fatalistic,” he added, “there was an air of inevitability about some kind of incident like this happening eventually.”
He continued, “Parliament is obviously an iconic British institution, everyone was concerned, knew it was a target. Everyone’s alive to that.”
Mr. Torrance noted that “everyone wanted to be as normal as possible,” and that sentiment seemed to be shared across the city early Thursday morning, as Londoners went to work as usual. Many clutched newspapers, with lurid headlines and photographs detailing the bloody attack.
Mrs. May said in a speech on Wednesday that life would go on and that the country must not cave into terrorism, and Londoners seemed to be taking the attacks in stride.
“As I was coming in through the Tube, I noticed there was a great air of calm,” said Elizabeth Sweeney, 57, who works at the European Parliament and was in London at the time of the attack. “That was the overriding sense that I had, first thing.”
After the recent bloody attacks in Brussels and Paris, many Londoners shared a sense of inevitability that the British capital could be next. They said that expectation, combined with British mettle conditioned over centuries of war, terrorism and other challenges, had helped people stay calm.
“We do have a tendency to just get on with it,” said Meredith O’Shaughnessy, 38, an event planner.
“It takes a lot to shake a Londoner. The Blitz spirit lives on,” she added, referring to the German raids over Britain during World War II, when Britons — and Londoners — showed determination and resolve.
At least three police officers were among those wounded on the bridge. Also among the wounded were three 10th-grade boys from a group of students visiting from the Brittany region of France, and a woman who fell or plunged into the River Thames. A spokeswoman for the Paris prosecutor’s office said on Thursday that because three of the victims were French, it had opened an investigation into attempted murder in relation to a terrorist enterprise.
Law enforcement officials said that the police were now focused on analyzing the background and the motive of the attacker. Roy Ramm, who spent nearly three decades in the Metropolitan Police and was the commander of specialist operations, said that once officers had identified the attacker, they would move backward, using closed-circuit TV footage to track his movements throughout the day.
Mr. Ramm said that another team would simultaneously be researching the assailant’s background and those of his associates, and would see if he had ever been the subject of surveillance or on watch lists.
Mr. Ramm added that British intelligence authorities would be communicating with their international counterparts to establish whether the suspect was part of a network, and also to determine if he was on their radar at all, had left a travel footprint, or was known to have associated with known radical individuals.
Mr. Ramm said the violence showed how a so-called “marauding terrorist” could execute a “low-tech” assault. “There were no guns to purchase on a risky illicit market, no explosives to obtain or synthesize,” he said.
The attack brought to mind Islamic State attacks using vehicles in Berlin and in Nice, France, although the toll in London was far lower. Part of the investigation in London, law enforcement officials said, would focus on the car the assailant used, a Hyundai Tucson, which has already offered some clues: It was registered in Chelmsford, to the east of London, and may have been rented in Birmingham, one of the places the police conducted raids overnight.
Mr. Ramm said that the vehicle would undergo a major forensic examination, including checks for fingerprints and DNA to identify anyone else who might have been in the vehicle. “This is a lot of work and a big test,” he said.
Questions were already being raised as to how a knife-wielding attacker had been able to get so close to the Houses of Parliament, the center of British democracy. Several lawmakers asked how the assailant had been able to enter the area below the iconic clock tower known as Big Ben, and called for the security gaps to be plugged.
Britain has one of the most sophisticated counterterrorism operations in Europe, but efforts to track extremists have become harder in recent years, experts say. For years, the police were able to keep close tabs on potential Islamist radicals and terrorists, including Anjem Choudary, one of the most outspoken and effective hate preachers in Britain. For years he was the public face of radical Islam, encouraging dozens of followers to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State and vowing to convert Buckingham Palace into a mosque.
The Home Office made support for the Islamic State a criminal offense in June 2014, when Mrs. May was home secretary, and experts on radicalism said that drove many Islamist extremists underground.The Home Office made support for the Islamic State a criminal offense in June 2014, when Mrs. May was home secretary, and experts on radicalism said that drove many Islamist extremists underground.
Mobeen Azhar, who has made several documentaries on Islamist radicalism in Britain and who knows Mr. Choudary, said that criminalizing support for the militant group had undoubtedly prevented some vulnerable young people from coming under the influence of radical propaganda. But he added that the networks had also become more careful, to avoid detection. Mobeen Azhar, who has made several documentaries on Islamist radicalism in Britain and who knows Mr. Choudary, said that criminalizing support for the militant group had undoubtedly prevented some vulnerable young people from being influenced by radical propaganda. But he said the networks had also become more careful, to avoid detection.
“It used to be that radicals in London would meet in church halls or at takeaways in East London, or set up stalls in parks,” Mr. Azhar said. “Now these networks meet in white vans and spaces not known to police, and have gone more underground, making them more difficult to track.” “It used to be that radicals in London would meet in church halls or at takeaways in East London, or set up stalls in parks,” Mr. Azhar said. “Now these networks meet in white vans and spaces not known to police and have gone more underground, making them more difficult to track.”
On Thursday morning, the Islamic State issued a statement on the messaging app Telegram, declaring that the attacker was a “soldier” who “carried out the operation in response to appeals” to fight Western powers involved in military operations in the Middle East. The terrorist group has called for attacks on Britain, and Mr. Masood’s assault was reminiscent of attacks in France and Germany that were carried out with vehicles. A man tried to drive into a crowd in Antwerp, Belgium, on Thursday but was stopped.
Officials on Thursday reduced the death toll from the London attack to four from five, including Mr. Masood. He used the rented vehicle to mow down scores of pedestrians on Westminster Bridge, killing two of them: Kurt W. Cochran, an American tourist in his 50s, and Aysha Frade, 43, a British teacher. He then proceeded on foot to the gates of Parliament, where he fatally stabbed a police constable, Keith Palmer, 48, before being shot dead by the police.
Consistent with the multicultural character of London, the victims of the attack also included 12 Britons, five South Koreans, three French schoolchildren, two Greeks, two Romanians, and one citizen each from China, Germany, Ireland and Italy.
An area outside Parliament remained a large crime scene on Thursday; television video showed police officers examining the pavement stones outside Parliament for clues.
Inside, shaken lawmakers recalled an unsettling day.
Nigel Evans, a Conservative lawmaker, had just voted on Wednesday afternoon when a colleague rushed up to him, asking anxiously if he had seen Mrs. May. The attack had begun, and a fellow lawmaker, Tobias Ellwood, had tried in vain to resuscitate Constable Palmer.
Worrying about possible additional attackers, security officers began searching frantically for other intruders, and lawmakers and their staff did their best to keep out of the way. “The last thing they wanted was us running around the place,” Mr. Evans said.
A young parliamentary researcher found himself in the wrong place and was swiftly challenged. “He had his hands in the air and was walking, slowly, up to members of a SWAT team with submachine guns,” Mr. Evans recalled.
Specialist officers, some wearing black balaclavas, began to move through the building, securing each room, breaking down at least one door on the way.
The Palace of Westminster, which includes the Houses of Parliament, is made up of a bewildering warren of corridors, and the work of ensuring that it was clear of assailants took time. A group of visiting schoolchildren — some in tears — were among those caught up in the confusion.
For hours, lawmakers were confined to specific areas, where they were given water and in some cases sandwiches. But what some lacked most of all was the power to communicate, and to check that their staff was safe. Very few had chargers for their cellphones, and those who did sought power sockets. Some waited for a traditional phone line in one of the offices close to the chamber.
Over all, the atmosphere was one of calm and cooperation, however. “People appreciated the gravity of the situation,” Mr. Evans said.
That may have been partly because an attack of this type was not completely unexpected. Security has been noticeably tightened in Parliament in recent years, with large barriers being placed in front of parts of the building to ward off the threat of a truck bomb. Police with submachine guns patrol the Parliament grounds routinely.
But the complex is by a busy street, and some lawmakers still wonder whether some of the security was designed with the idea of fending off the type of attacks once mounted by the Irish Republican Army, which in 1979 assassinated a Conservative lawmaker, Airey Neave, using a car bomb in Parliament.
“I am shocked, but I am not surprised,” Chris Bryant, a Labour lawmaker, said of the latest attack. “We have always known that a marauding attack by an individual would be the most difficult to prevent.”
Mr. Bryant said that security would have to be reviewed in line with the normal protocols but that no parliamentary building could be 100 percent secure. Lawmakers live with threats to their safety — Mr. Bryant says police are investigating several against him — and some feel safer in Parliament than in their constituencies.
The risk in less well protected locations was underscored last year with the assassination of Jo Cox, a Labour lawmaker, in her district in northern England.
On Thursday, with tightened security, lawmakers crowded into the parliamentary chamber determined to show that they would not be deterred from their job. Ed Miliband, a former leader of the opposition Labour Party, said the mood had been one of “shock and determination and also admiration for the job that the security people are doing.”
“I think we are seeing people’s increased determination to carry on with their normal business,” he said.
Mr. Bryant said he understands that security needs to be reviewed but does not want to make Parliament into a fortress, with lawmakers hidden from their voters behind new barricades. “It is an iconic building,” he said. “You couldn’t get a building more iconic of Western democracy, but being an old building, it poses challenges of its own.”
Mrs. May said that life would go on and that the country must not cave into terrorism, and Londoners seemed to be taking the attacks in stride.
“As I was coming in through the tube, I noticed there was a great air of calm,” said Elizabeth Sweeney, 57, referring to the British subway. “That was the overriding sense that I had, first thing.”
After the recent bloody attacks in Brussels and Paris, many Londoners had felt that an attack in their city was inevitable. “We do have a tendency to just get on with it,” said Meredith O’Shaughnessy, 38, an event planner. “It takes a lot to shake a Londoner.”