Why are terrorist videos still online?
Westminster attack families slam web giants
fAMIlIes of the Westminster terror attack victims yesterday ordered web giants to explain why their sites remain a safe haven for jihadis.
They want answers over the continuing failure of Google, YouTube and facebook to block vile extremist material.
Relatives say the multi-billion dollar tech companies should be dragged before the inquests into those who died in the March 2017 attack.
Their legal teams questioned why companies including WhatsApp and Telegram provide a way for violent extremists to communicate in secret using encrypted texts.
The demands were aired yesterday at the start of an Old Bailey hearing to organise inquests into victims of the atrocity. However, the Government says the issues are too broad for a coroner to examine and a Home Office lawyer said the hearings would not deal with problems of ‘legislation and social policy’. Khalid Masood binged on extremist material before murdering five people, including PC Keith Palmer, in a car and knife rampage. He browsed Googleowned YouTube for terror videos, including suicide attacks, and used WhatsApp to access illegal jihadi documents. It also emerged yesterday that the bodybuilder pumped himself full of anabolic steroids hours before launching his killing spree. The drugs have been linked to aggressive episodes known as ‘roid rage’.
In court, lawyers argued that grieving families want to go much further than an internal review of the police response to the attack published year.
Barrister Gareth Patterson called for the coroner to examine problems including ‘the internet, end-to-end encryption and radicalisation in prison and failure to get to grips with these problems which occur again and again’.
Calling on the coroner to shed light on these problems, he said: ‘Terrorist trial after terrorist trial shows the same problems featuring in the evidence. Why it is that radicalisation material continues to be freely available on the internet? We don’t understand.
‘This particular attacker used WhatsApp to send a jihadi document without any difficulty.’
The Daily Mail is campaigning for tech giants to take responsibility for their content.
Kent-born Masood, 52, drove a rented 4X4 into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge on March 22 last year, killing four. PC Palmer, 48, was then fatally stabbed in the Palace of Westminster’s forecourt before Masood was shot dead by police.
Chief Coroner Mark lucraft said the inquest into the deaths will take place in september and could last up to four weeks. A separate jury inquest will follow immediately afterwards into the death of Masood.
An internal review by MI5 and counter-terrorist police revealed he had been on the periphery of a previous inquiry.
Born Adrian elms, the father-of-three had a string of convictions for violent crimes and was jailed twice – once for grievous bodily harm.
‘Occurs again and again’