Police have found
no evidence that the man who killed four people in London last week was associated with the Islamic State group or al-Qaida, a British counterterrorism officer says.
LONDON — Police have found no evidence that the man who killed four people in London last week was associated with the Islamic State group or al-Qaida, a senior British counterterrorism officer said Monday.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu of the Metropolitan Police said Westminster attacker Khalid Masood clearly had “an interest in jihad,” but police have no indication he discussed his attack plans with others.
Basu, who also serves as Britain’s senior national coordinator for counterterrorism policing, said Wednesday’s attack — in which Masood ran down pedestrians on London’s Westminster Bridge before fatally stabbing a policeman guarding Parliament — “appears to be based on low-sophistication, lowtech, low-cost techniques copied from other attacks.”
Masood was shot dead by police, ending his rampage, which police revealed lasted 82 seconds.
Police believe Masood — a 52-year-old Briton with convictions for violence who had spent several years in Saudi Arabia — acted alone, but are trying to determine whether others helped inspire or direct his actions.
Detectives on Monday continued to question a 30-year-old man arrested Sunday and a 58-year-old man arrested shortly after Wednesday’s attack.
Prime Minister Theresa May said last week that Masood was “a peripheral figure” in an investigation into violent extremism some years ago. But Basu said he was not a “subject of interest” for counterterrorism police or the intelligence services before last week’s attack.
Masood was born Adrian Elms, but changed his name in 2005, suggesting a conversion to Islam.
His mother, Janet Ajao, said Monday she was “deeply shocked, saddened and numbed” by his murderous actions.
In a statement released through the police, Ajao said that “since discovering that it was my son that was responsible I have shed many tears for the people caught up in this horrendous incident.”
Basu said there was no sign Masood was radicalized during one of his stints in prison.
“I know when, where and how Masood committed his atrocities, but now I need to know why,” Basu said. “Most importantly, so do the victims and families.”
As Basu appealed for anyone who spoke to Masood on the day of the attack to come forward, the British government repeated calls for tech companies to give police and intelligence services access to encrypted messages exchanged by terrorism suspects.
Masood used the messaging service WhatsApp just before he began his attack. Home Secretary Amber Rudd said Sunday that such services must not “provide a secret place for terrorists to communicate with each other.”
Tech companies have strongly resisted previous calls to create back-doors into encrypted messaging, arguing that to do so would compromise the secure communications underpinning everything from shopping to tax returns to online banking.