China Daily Global Edition (USA)
Police carry out raids after terror crash, name suspect
British police have searched two addresses in the city of Birmingham and another in Nottingham in the aftermath of the attempted terror attack in Westminster in London on Tuesday morning.
A man named by police as 29-year-old Salih Khater, a British citizen originally from Sudan, is being held by police after a car hit cyclists and pedestrians before crashing into security barriers outside the House of Commons during Tuesday’s rush hour.
The suspect is not previously known to British security services, although the BBC reports he was known to local police in the West Midlands.
He is believed to have been living above an internet cafe on Stratford Road in Birmingham’s Sparkbrook district until four months ago, when he moved to the Highgate area of the city.
Police visited the Stratford Road premises on Tuesday night but on Wednesday morning there was no police presence.
He was also an accountancy student at Coventry University from September 2017 to May this year but a university spokesman said he is no longer enrolled.
On his Facebook page, Khater describes himself as a shop manager. It says he went to school in the town of Wad Madani before studying at Sudan University of Science and Technology.
His social network and connections are mainly linked to Sudan, Birmingham and Nottingham.
Following Tuesday’s incident, a male and female cyclist were taken to hospital with non life-threatening injuries and later discharged, with a third person receiving medical assistance at the scene.
Areas around the scene of the crash were closed off for much of the day but Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu said: “There is no intelligence at this time of further danger to Londoners or to the rest of the UK connected to this incident.”
Police have revealed details of the movements of the car used before the attack.
It was driven from Birmingham to London on Monday night, arriving shortly after midnight, and stayed close to Oxford Street in central London until dawn.
The car, a silver Ford Fiesta, was then driven toward Westminster and Whitehall, the heart of London’s political district, where it remained for around 90 minutes before the attack, which was captured on CCTV.
No one else was in the car when it crashed and police confirmed that no weapons were found but Basu said that “given that this appears to be a deliberate act, the method, and this being an iconic site”, it was being treated as a terrorrelated incident.