Westminster suspect kicked out of university after failing test
A SUDANESE refugee accused of mowing down cyclists in a suspected terror attack outside the Houses of Parliament had recently been kicked out of university.
Salih Khater, 29, was last night being questioned by police as they tried to piece together a motive for Tuesday’s attack, which saw him arrested by armed officers after crashing into a security barrier.
A picture began to emerge yesterday of a quiet Aston Villa fan who played football and pool with friends and smoked a shisha pipe at a local café.
He was granted asylum a decade ago and was granted citizenship earlier this year, sources confirmed.
It is understood that the Home Office is looking at his immigration status.
His social media profile showed he liked Celine Dion, Rihanna, rapper Eminem and Sudanese music, and posts about music – in English and Arabic – were interspersed with others showing mosques and desert landscapes.
Khater had more than 300 friends on Facebook, but those who knew him said that he had changed in recent weeks, becoming withdrawn and seeming depressed.
His friends say that he had lost his brother and father within a short space of time and it has also emerged that he had been expelled from his accountancy degree at Coventry University.
Khater is said to have travelled from his Birmingham home late on Monday night in a car bought two months ago and spent the early hours in the Tottenham Court Road area before travelling to Westminster at 6am on Tuesday.
It is understood that he then spent an hour and a half staking out the area before swerving onto the wrong side of the road and mowing down cyclists at 7.37am, then crashing into the security barrier outside the House of Lords.
The Daily Telegraph understands that police and security services have not yet found any link to extremist material and it was said that he was not known to police prior to his arrest. A source said: “He is not the norm. Police still do not have any idea on his motive.”
The Met Police said officers have concluded searches at two addresses in Birmingham and one in Nottingham, but last night officers remained at the flat where he had been living. He was arrested on Tuesday on suspicion of terror offences and was yesterday further arrested for attempted murder.
Khater was born in Darfur but moved to Wad Madani in east central Sudan, where his parents were farmers. He studied electrical engineering at Sudan University of Science and Technology in Khartoum before coming to Britain alone as an asylum seeker around 2008. He was granted the right to remain because of the political situation in Sudan, The Telegraph understands.
In 2010 he enrolled on an English language course at what is now Birmingham’s South & City College and returned there in 2014 to study science.
Isaac Solomon, 33, a fellow student, said Khater wanted to be a pharmacist, but when he left college in 2017 he was upset as his English was not good enough to get on the proper course.
Later that year Khater enrolled at Coventry University to study accountancy but failed his first year and in May his “enrolment was terminated”, a spokesman said. A taxi driver who knows Khater but did not wish to be named, said: “He appeared very stressed and quiet last time I saw him about two weeks ago. He was not himself. I think his family problems were causing him a lot of stress. The last thing I heard was that Salih was going to try to get a visa to go back to Sudan, but then I saw him on the news.”
Abdullah Khater, Salih’s brother, confirmed to BBC Arabic that he had been due to visit his family.
Counter-terrorism officers were last night granted a warrant to detain Khater until Monday.