Suspect with 3 knives in Westminster ‘was Taliban bombmaker’
An Al Qaeda bomb maker who returned from Afghanistan to carry out a knife attack on MPs managed to get within yards of the gates of Downing Street, a court heard yesterday.
Khalid Ali, 28, had three knives and was on a mission to stab politicians, police and soldiers, it was alleged.
He was stopped by armed officers only a month after last year’s deadly terror attack on Westminster Bridge, the Old Bailey was told. He is said to have spent five years building bombs for the Taliban and Al Qaeda, detonating at least 300 devices in Afghanistan.
The FBI, which examined the fragments, found his fingerprints on sticky tape used to make devices in Kandahar province in 2012, the jury heard.
Ali returned to Britain and went to Westminster ‘for one reason and one reason only – to launch a deadly terror attack to strike at the very heart of this country’s democracy, by killing a police officer, a member of the military or even a parliamentarian’, said Brian Altman QC, prosecuting.
He was arrested by armed police in Whitehall. ‘When he was searched he was found to be in the possession of three knives of varying lengths which he had bought that same day,’ Mr Altman said.
‘Two knives were found in right and left pockets of his jacket. The longest was removed from the waistband of the tracksuit trousers he was wearing. Chillingly, but for the interception of the defendant by police, he would have carried out yet another murderous terror attack in Westminster.’
Ali claimed that he was armed for his own protection, but Mr Altman said: ‘The message he intended delivering was going to be an act of terrorism by the killing of an innocent person or persons, men or women, going about their daily lives – public servants just doing their duty.’
After his arrest Ali told police he had a message for ‘leaders and decision- makers’. He demanded the West should leave Muslim lands, that Palestine should be returned and that the West should release ‘prisoners of war’.
Ali declared himself a ‘mujadown
‘Intended to kill police or an MP’
hid’ and admitted his loyalty was to the Taliban and to Al Qaeda, for whom he claimed to be a bomb maker.
Mr Altman said: ‘In his interviews, not only did he admit this, but also at one stage admitted to detonating devices maybe more than 300 times, although he later backtracked on this.’
Four weeks earlier, Britishborn Khalid Masood had mown pedestrians on Westminster Bridge, killing five, and stabbed a police officer to death outside Parliament.
Ali was born in Saudi Arabia to Somali parents and moved to the UK aged two.
A trained plumber, he left Britain in 2013 to join the Taliban, telling his family in Tottenham, north London, he was off to do a two-week plumbing job. He was reported missing to police. In October 2016, he turned up at the British consulate in Istanbul claiming he had lost his passport.
He is said to have admitted travelling to Taliban-controlled areas and parts of Pakistan.
He returned to Britain and by the following March had begun planning his attack, jurors were told.
He carried out reconnaissance of the MI6 building at Vauxhall Cross, Westminster Bridge, the Houses of Parliament and Whitehall, the court heard.
Google Street View images of the MI6 building, including cameras and access points, along with images of armed police and officers wearing stab-proof vests were recovered from a phone that he allegedly threw in the Thames on the day of his arrest.
Ali denies preparing acts of terrorism and two charges of possessing an explosive substance in 2012.