Westminster suspect had lost third relative
THE man who ploughed his car into cyclists outside Westminster had recently suffered the loss of three relatives, it was revealed last night.
Police were continuing to quiz Salih Khater yesterday after he crashed his Ford Fiesta into a security barrier just after 7.30am on Tuesday.
After the incident, which resulted in armed police dragging Khater from his car, it emerged that the father of the 29-year-old Sudanese had died last November and one of his brothers shortly afterwards. Now friends have told The Mail on Sunday that Khater’s aunt – his father’s sister with whom he was close – also died recently and that he had learned his mother had been admitted to hospital in Sudan with a serious illness.
Khater had not been back to his homeland for a decade since arriving in Britain as an asylum seeker. He had recently been granted British citizenship and collected his UK passport last Monday.
Friends said he drove to London on Monday night in readiness to get a travel visa from the Sudanese embassy on Tuesday morning.
One friend, Abdul Younis, from Hockley, Birmingham, said: ‘Salih had been through a very difficult few months.’ He added that Khater had been upset at being removed from an accountancy course at Coventry University, but had attended a friend’s wedding two days before the attack. Mr Younis said: ‘He had the disappointment of failing his accountancy exams, so his family and friends told him to refresh himself with a trip home.’
Counter-terrorism officers are understood to have failed to find any links to terrorism or evidence of radicalisation, and are examining Khater’s mental health.