Westminster attacker's trajectory traced from criminality and village bigotry to extremism

26 March 2017 - 02:00 By ROBERT MENDICK
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Emergency services attend to Khalid Masood, who was shot and killed by police outside the Palace of Westminster in London after he ploughed his car into pedestrians and stabbed a policeman.
Emergency services attend to Khalid Masood, who was shot and killed by police outside the Palace of Westminster in London after he ploughed his car into pedestrians and stabbed a policeman.
Image: BBC

Khalid Masood, the Westminster attacker, snapped because of racism in his village and slashed the face of a cafe owner before possibly being radicalised in jail.

Masood, 52 years old at the time of his death, has been identified as the man formerly known as Adrian Elms, who had a history of violent knife crime.

A burly bodybuilding enthusiast, he received his first conviction in November 1983 for criminal damage when he was 18 and his last one in 2003 for possession of a knife.

He went off the rails in July 2000, slashing a man across the face after an argument that had "racial overtones". The attack landed him in jail.

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In another attack three years later, he stabbed a man in the nose before reportedly travelling to Saudi Arabia.

Elms - or Masood, the Islamic name he adopted - was known to British authorities as a vicious thug whose "violent extremism" had brought him to the attention of MI5. Yet at some point a decision was taken that he was no longer considered a threat.

On Wednesday, having stayed the night before the attack in a cheap hotel in Brighton, he got into a hired car, drove to London and then used it as a weapon to kill pedestrians on Westminster bridge.

Then, brandishing a knife, he slaughtered a police officer outside the palace of Westminster.

Masood told staff at the Preston Park Hotel "I'm off to London today" as if he was a tourist. The capital, he declared, "isn't like it used to be".

Masood, whose mother was white and father black, was born in Dartford in Kent. He was 35 and living in the quiet Sussex village of Northiam when in 2000 he slashed cafe owner Piers Mott in the face with a knife.

He had been in conflict with his victim before. After leaving the pub, in which he argued with Mott, Masood lost his temper and slashed seat covers in Mott's car.

When Mott arrived at his car, Masood waved the knife at him and caught his face, leaving him needing more than 20 stitches.

The court heard at the time that Masood had consumed four pints during the afternoon and had the knife because he was decorating his daughter's bedroom.

His lawyer said: "When the defendant moved to the local area it was to try to give his family and himself a better and more tranquil way of life.

"The majority of people seemed to get on well with them but there was a problem with this man. Things got out of hand on this particular day.

"There were racial overtones in the argument between himself and the victim. He let that get to him - unusually, because in the past he has been able to shrug off that sort of abuse.

block_quotes_start There were racial overtones in the argument between himself and the victim. He let that get to him - unusually, because in the past he has been able to shrug off that sort of abuse block_quotes_end

"He lost his temper and decided to take it out on this gentleman's vehicle. But in one movement the knife came into contact with the victim's face.

"His wife and family have now become ostracised in the village. He will effectively have to move his family from the village and start to live his life all over again. It will leave the village with a view of black people in the area.

"He does deeply regret this incident ever arising and expresses remorse for what he has done."

Masood, one of only two black men in Northiam according to a report at the time, was sentenced to two years in prison.

Three years later and now out of jail, Masood was accused of stabbing a man in the nose, leaving him needing cosmetic surgery. He was sent back to jail for another six months.

It is thought that after his time in prison, he came onto MI5's radar. A Whitehall source said he had been a person of interest but "peripheral" to a terror investigation.

British Prime Minister Theresa May, in a statement on Thursday, was quick to absolve security services of blame.

"What I can confirm is that the man was British-born and that - some years ago - he was once investigated in relation to concerns about violent extremism. 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.

By 2005 Masood was working in Yanbu, Saudi Arabia, according to The Sun, which says it has a copy of his CV.

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In the CV, which was sent out just weeks ago, he is said to describe himself as "friendly and approachable".

The document reportedly claims he had an economics degree. He apparently began in sales and was later promoted to manager at a Sussex chemicals company.

In 2004 he is understood to have married Farzana Malik. It is unclear what became of their marriage and whether Masood converted to Islam at the time. In the same year, The Sun reports, Masood's CV claims he gained a certificate allowing him to teach English as a second language.

In 2009, Masood reportedly returned from Saudi Arabia to the UK. After a five-month gap, he is said to have joined a college in Luton as a "senior English teacher".

Over the past five or six years, Masood, his wife, aged 39, and their young children had been on the move. Electoral roll records show him living in areas notorious for pockets of Islamist extremism.

He lived for more than two years until 2013 in Luton, where Anjem Choudary, an influential preacher now in jail for terror offences, had been a regular visitor.

A former neighbour in Luton, Katie Garriques, a former headmistress, remembered a "polite, shy" and "quite portly man" who she often saw gardening and playing with his children.

When she saw the photograph of Masood after he was shot in Westminster, she recognised him instantly. "I'm just saddened. I feel sick, to be honest," she said.

Monica, another neighbour in Luton, said she only ever saw him at night. "He was like a shadow, you wouldn't often see him. He was often in Islamic dress," she said.

From Luton, Masood and his family moved to east London. A neighbour, who asked not to be named, said Masood frequented a mosque in Leyton.

Another neighbour, Ibrahima Kone, a cab driver, said the family lived there for three years. At some stage Masood's wife had moved to a new property on the site of the Olympic Village. A property there was raided by police on Wednesday night.

In the past year, Masood and his family moved to Birmingham to a block of flats at Quayside in Winson Green. It is not clear why they moved there. That property was also raided by anti-terror police following the attack.

Student Kaodi Campbell confirmed the man in the picture was her neighbour.

"He was always polite and would say 'Hello, hello' to me," she said.

"You could tell they were religious, his wife always wore traditional dress. I last saw them just over a month ago. They had three children. He had a job and you would see him leaving for work or taking his children to school."

Local children remember him joining in games of football. One boy said: "Sometimes he'd play as well, though he wasn't very good. He wore a skull cap and had a long bushy beard."

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On Monday or Tuesday, Masood turned up at the car-hire company Enterprise at its Spring Hill depot in Birmingham and rented the Hyundai SUV used in Wednesday's attack.

He gave his profession as a teacher and, it is understood, his address as a rented flat not far from the Enterprise offices.

On Wednesday at 11pm, armed police stormed the upstairs flat at Hagley Road. More than a dozen officers armed with machine guns stormed the premises, making three arrests.

One witness, who works in a shop near the second-floor flat, said: "The man from London lived here. They came and arrested three men."

Scotland Yard said on Thursday it had made eight arrests, seven in Birmingham and one in east London of a 39-year-old woman.

David Videcette, a former Scotland Yard counterterrorism officer and security expert, said it was odd that Masood had committed the atrocity at the age of 52.

"His age is surprising as most terrorists are radicalised at a much younger age," said Videcette.

"It would be my assessment that he has probably had quite a troubled past, with involvement in drink or drugs leading him into criminality.

"Then at some point, possibly in the last decade, he has converted to Islam and changed his name. Then it appears that he has fallen under the malign influence of others who have encouraged or persuaded him to carry out this attack, possibly for money for his family.

"What will be key is establishing why he has suddenly and quite recently moved to Birmingham, having spent most of his life in the southeast.

"Pretty much every terror case I worked on had some Birmingham connection somewhere along the line.

"It is likely there were people there who were part of his close circle and the police will want to look at that aspect very closely." - © The Daily Telegraph, London

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