British police officers work at the scene of the attack at the Houses of Parliament in London on March 23, 2017. Jack Taylor / Getty Images
British police officers work at the scene of the attack at the Houses of Parliament in London on March 23, 2017. Jack Taylor / Getty Images

London attacker named as Khalid Masood, a 52-year-old husband and father



The man who killed four people round the British parliament was named as British-born 52-year-old Khalid Masood, claimed by ISIL as a “soldier”.

He was born in Kent, a mostly affluent part of south-east England, but police believe he had most recently been living in the Birmingham area in central England. He was married with a young child.

Masood was also known by several aliases and had previously been investigated by British intelligence as a “peripheral figure”. But although he had numerous convictions for assault, possession of offensive weapons and public order offences, police said there was prior intelligence to indicate he was planning a terrorist attack.

He acquired his first criminal conviction in November 1983 for criminal damage. His most recent was in December 2003 for possession of a knife.

Prime minister Theresa May told parliament on Thursday that the assailant who killed four people and injured 40 more was “inspired by Islamist ideology” and had been investigated in the past for possible links to extremist violence.

“He was a peripheral figure. The case is historic. He was not part of the current intelligence picture. There was no prior intelligence of his intent or of the plot,” she said.

Addressing the House of Commons, the lower house of the British parliament, on the morning after the attack, a sombre Mrs May said the attempt to “silence our democracy” had failed. Shortly after her speech, the ISIL propaganda arm, Amaq, claimed responsibility for the attack – the first time the extremists have claimed an attack on British soil – calling the assailant “a soldier of the Islamic State”.

Overnight, British police arrested eight people and raided six addresses, mainly in Birmingham.

Masood killed four people, first driving his black Hyundai i40 car into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge and then stabbing to death Keith Palmer, an unarmed police constable on duty at the gates of the Palace of Wesminster, before he was himself shot dead by other police officers.

The 40 people left injured as he mowed them down were from 11 countries, Mrs May said. At least 40 people were injured as the attacker tried to plough into the crowd of pedestrians on the bridge. These included three French children, a dozen Britons, and people from Romania, South Korea, Germany and Greece.

The British counter-intelligence service, MI5, keeps track of around 3,000 people in Britain who are thought to be capable of carrying out domestic terrorist acts. The top 500 on this list are the focus of active investigations. However, Masood was not even on the longer list of 3,000.

There is “no reason to believe” that further attacks are planned, Mrs May said.

At least two of the addresses raided by police through the night and into the early hours of Thursday were in Birmingham, where a fifth of the 1.1-million-strong population is Muslim. The Hyundai car Masood drove was also rented from the a Birmingham branch office of the Enterprise car hire company. An employee recognised the vehicle from its number plate while watching the news on television.

Iwona Romek, a factory worker, also recognised Masood when she was shown a photograph of him on a stretcher. She knew he was married to an Asian woman and had a young child and lived on the same housing estate in the Winson Green area but said the family moved away some months ago.

“They were a very nice family, very reserved,” said Ms Romek. “He was very calm. I used to see him outside doing his garden – never any trouble.”

Italian Olympic boxer Vincenzo Mangiacapre on Thursday described how he was touring the grounds after an event at the Houses of Parliament when he spotted the man now named as Khalid Masood attacking PC Keith Palmer with a knife in each hand.

“He gave him around 10 stabs in the back, then he left the policeman and came toward us,” the 2012 Olympic light welterweight bronze medallist said. “I was petrified looking into the eyes of this person thinking what a human mind could do.”

A plain clothes police officer dressed in a suit, pulled out a gun and yelled for the attacker, who was running toward parliament, to stop. Boxing coach Olympic gold medallist Maurizio Stecca said the attacker kept running and was shot several times. The stabbed policeman tried to crawl to safety but collapsed. Tony Davis, a British boxing coach who was at the same event was among the first to give first aid to the fallen policeman. Mr Davis who also served with the military said, “Instinct kicked in. I leapt over the fence because that guy needed assistance. The police were holding their ground and that is when poor Keith got attacked.”

Minutes later Mr Davis was joined by Tobias Ellwood, a member of parliament and also ex-military, who took over giving CPR.

Masood’s method in London bore many similarities with the attack last July in Nice and in December in Berlin. All involved a vehicle driven at speed into densely-crowded areas. ISIL claimed those attacks too.

Within six hours, an online fund-raising page set up for Mr Palmer’s family had received more than 100,000 pounds in donations.

The Muslim Council of Britain was quick to condemn the attack, first on Wednesday evening and then again on Thursday.

Harun Khan, the council’s secretary general, said. “There is no justification for this act whatsoever. The best response to this outrage is to make sure we come together in solidarity and not allow the terrorists to divide us. I hope my Muslim brothers and sisters will reach out to fellow Londoners and Britons in solidarity to demonstrate that such hatred will not defeat our way of life.”

SSubramanian@thenational.ae

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Scores

Wales 74-24 Tonga
England 35-15 Japan
Italy 7-26 Australia

RESULTS

Argentina 4 Haiti 0

Peru 2 Scotland 0

Panama 0 Northern Ireland 0

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Tree of Hell

Starring: Raed Zeno, Hadi Awada, Dr Mohammad Abdalla

Director: Raed Zeno

Rating: 4/5

Anxiety and work stress major factors

Anxiety, work stress and social isolation are all factors in the recogised rise in mental health problems.

A study UAE Ministry of Health researchers published in the summer also cited struggles with weight and illnesses as major contributors.

Its authors analysed a dozen separate UAE studies between 2007 and 2017. Prevalence was often higher in university students, women and in people on low incomes.

One showed 28 per cent of female students at a Dubai university reported symptoms linked to depression. Another in Al Ain found 22.2 per cent of students had depressive symptoms - five times the global average.

It said the country has made strides to address mental health problems but said: “Our review highlights the overall prevalence of depressive symptoms and depression, which may long have been overlooked."

Prof Samir Al Adawi, of the department of behavioural medicine at Sultan Qaboos University in Oman, who was not involved in the study but is a recognised expert in the Gulf, said how mental health is discussed varies significantly between cultures and nationalities.

“The problem we have in the Gulf is the cross-cultural differences and how people articulate emotional distress," said Prof Al Adawi. 

“Someone will say that I have physical complaints rather than emotional complaints. This is the major problem with any discussion around depression."

Daniel Bardsley