Known terrorist free to prepare Westminster plot for five months
Knifeman arrested moments before attack had been identified as a Taliban bomber
AN ISLAMIC terrorist arrested as he prepared to launch a knife attack on MPS and police in Westminster had been identified as a senior Taliban bomb maker five months earlier but was not detained, it can be revealed.
Khalid Ali, 28, had three blades tucked under his clothing when he was stopped by police in Whitehall on April 27 last year, just moments away from carrying out a deadly assault.
But months earlier the police and the security services chose to place him under surveillance rather than charge him, despite the FBI finding his fingerprints on a cache of improvised explosive devices (IEDS) in Afghanistan.
Following his arrest Ali told police he had built more than 300 bombs that were responsible for killing and maiming British and US troops.
Ali, a plumber from Edmonton, north London, became increasingly devout after travelling to Palestine in 2010 on an aid convoy.
The following year he disappeared from Britain, telling his family he had got a two-week job in Birmingham.
Instead he made his way to Afghanistan, where he spent five years working as a Taliban bomb maker. In October 2016, Ali turned up at the British consulate in Istanbul, claiming to be a tourist who had lost his passport. Suspicious officials alerted the UK authorities and he was arrested when he landed at Heathrow Airport and questioned under the Terrorism Act, before being allowed to go.
The following month US forensic experts confirmed that they had a fingerprint match for Ali on fragments of IEDS recovered in Afghanistan.
Asked why Ali was not arrested at that point, Met Police Asst Commissioner Dean Haydon, said the British authorities had to wait for due process to take place as it was US evidence that had been collected in Afghanistan. Permission to use the evidence had only come through hours after Ali was arrested for the planned knife attack.
Despite being under surveillance, Ali was initially stopped from going on a knife rampage when his mother told police she had found an arsenal of weapons in his bedroom. The matter was recorded as a domestic incident and Ali was not arrested or detained.
The following day he re-armed himself, buying an eight-inch chef ’s knife, two 3.5-inch blades and a rucksack.
After travelling to Westminster by Tube, Ali dropped his mobile phone in the River Thames, before armed police moved in to arrest him.
Mr Haydon said: “It is apparent to me that Ali spent some considerable years helping the Taliban create – and maybe even detonate – bombs which could maim and kill many people in Afghanistan. All this before turning his attention to killing people in his home country. Ali did not count on the joined-up working of the UK counter terrorism network and its partners internationally.
“Together, we have stopped a terrorist attack and put before the courts an individual whom I suspect thought would never be held to account for his crimes overseas.”
Ali denied plotting to kill MPS or police in the knife attack and two counts of bomb making relating to the devices found in Afghanistan, but was convicted on all counts and remanded in custody to be sentenced on July 20.