Masood was ‘nice and friendly’
Attacker with history of violence behaved like any other hotel guest
Attacker with history of violence behaved like any other hotel guest.
LONDON: Khalid Masood, the 52-year-old Briton behind this week’s terror attack on parliament, had a history of violence and was once investigated by the security services for potential extremism.
Police said the rampage that left four people dead in London was “Islamist-related”, and people who knew Masood in recent years described him as religious.
Known by “a number of aliases”, including his birth name Adrian Russell Ajao, he had a string of convictions, although none of them were terror-related.
Born on Christmas Day 1964 in Kent in southeast England, Masood had been living in the central English city of Birmingham, where armed police have raided several properties since Wednesday’s attack.
Masood lived in several places in southern and central England over the years, working for 12 years at a cleaning chemicals company in southern England, according to The Sun newspaper.
London’s Saudi Arabian embassy said Friday that he also worked in the country as an English teacher between 2005 and 2009.
He had a violent streak: between 1983 and 2003 he racked up convictions for grievous bodily harm, possession of offensive weapons and public order offences, according to the police.
British media said he also went by the alias Adrian Elms, a name he used in 2000 when he was sentenced to two years in jail for slashing a man’s face in the Sussex village of Northiam, not far from where he grew up.
Prime Minister Theresa May said that he was once investigated by British domestic spy agency MI5 in relation to “concerns about violent extremism”, but was not part of the current “intelligence picture”.
The night before the attack, Masood stayed in a hotel in Brighton on the southern English coast, where he told staff he was visiting friends. He had rented a car, that he later used to mow down pedestrians on Westminster Bridge, from Solihull in Birmingham.
Hotel manager Sabeur Toumi told Sky News that the police had shown him a photo to confirm Masood’s identity.
The attacker, who also stayed the previous Friday, was “very friendly, laughing and joking”, and discussed his family in Birmingham, he said.
“It is very shocking because these days you don’t know who are the bad ones and who are the good ones. He was just like any other guest who checked into the hotel.”
Police said they were seeking to establish if Masood was inspired by terrorist propaganda, or if “others have encouraged, supported or directed him”. British media described Masood as a Muslim convert, citing neighbours who described him as devout.
Iwona Romek, a former neighbour, told the Birmingham Mail that the family had abruptly moved out of their house in Winson Green, in western Birmingham, around Christmas without saying goodbye.
More recently Masood may have been living in a flat next to a Persian restaurant and a pizza parlour in the upmarket Edgbaston neighbourhood, according to reports.