‘Terror attack carried out after surveillance trip to find targets’
THE Westminster attacker travelled from his home in the Midlands to search out potential targets, it was claimed last night.
The man – a British national born overseas aged 29 – drove to the capital from Birmingham during Monday night to prepare for his alleged terror assault.
Last night counter-terror police revealed the Ford Fiesta used in the attack was a privately owned vehicle.
CCTV footage shows the suspect arriving in the London area just after midnight yesterday.
The vehicle was seen in the Tottenham Court Road area over a four-and-a half-hour period.
The vehicle was then driven around the Westminster and Whitehall area from around 6am for more than an hour and a half before the attack at 7.37am. The car, a 2010 Ford Fiesta Zetec which was registered in Nottingham, was bought just eight weeks ago.
It had been written off by insurers in the autumn of last year but put back on the road before being sold again in June.
Yesterday armed police raided a flat in the Radford area of the city along with two properties in Birmingham.
Plain-clothed police officers could be seen outside an address in Peveril Street in Nottingham.
Neighbours have said the house is home to six Sudanese people.
An occupant said: “They thought the car was insured or registered here but it isn’t.
“They were asking about a silver Fiesta.
“They said they were investigating what happened in Westminster.”
Police are trying to establish what drove the suspect to launch the attack which has chilling echoes of the Westminster atrocity carried out by Khalid Masood which left five people dead in March 2017.
The driver in yesterday’s attack was not known to MI5 or investigators from counter-terrorism command but it is believed he was of concern to police in his hometown.
Detectives do not believe he was a member of a terror cell.
But Scotland Yard counter terror chief Neil Basu said: “Given that this appears to be a deliberate act, the method and this being an iconic site, we are treating it as a terrorist incident.”
Officers are trying to piece together the suspect’s movements in the days before the attack and attempting to establish any known contacts.
However police said he was refusing to co-operate.
The driver is being held at a south London police station.
Police said there was “no intelligence at this time of further danger” to the public.