MPs’ security beefed up after slaying
BRITAIN’S interior minister says MPs’ security will be beefed up, after an MP was stabbed to death as he held a public meeting with constituents, in the second such attack in five years.
Veteran Conservative MP David Amess, 69, was talking with voters at a church in the town of Leigh-on-Sea, east of London, when he was killed on Friday.
The attack has spread fear among MPs, coming just over five years after the similar killing of Labour MP Jo Cox in the run-up to the Brexit referendum.
Police are investigating “a potential motivation linked to Islamist extremism”, led by Scotland Yard’s Counter Terrorism Command.
Home Secretary Priti Patel has ordered a review of security measures for MPs. “We need to close any gaps” in security provision for MPs, whose work includes regular meetings with constituents, called “surgeries”, she said.
Patel nevertheless stressed to that, “We have the best security and intelligence agencies in the world.”
MPs will now be sharing information on their whereabouts with police.
Uniformed police were guarding some surgeries following the attack, which prompted calls from some MPs for a pause in face-to-face meetings.
Police said detectives had until Friday to question the suspected attacker after he was detained under the Terrorism Act, which allowed them to extend his detention. He’s not been charged.
British media, citing unnamed official sources, identified the suspect as Ali Harbi Ali. Reports said he was a British national of Somali descent who had been referred to Prevent, the UK’s counter-terrorist scheme for those thought to be at risk of radicalisation.
Ali is believed not have spent long
on the programme, which is voluntary, and was never formally a “subject of interest” to MI5, the domestic security agency, said the BBC.
Detectives have carried out searches at three addresses in London. It is believed the suspected attacker acted alone and was “self-radicalised”. He may have been inspired by Al-Shabaab, Al-Qaeda-linked Islamists in Somalia.
Ali’s father, named as Harbi Ali Kullane and said to be a former adviser to the prime minister of Somalia, confirmed that his son was in custody.
The government stepped up security for MPs following the 2016 murder of Cox, 41, who was shot and stabbed outside her constituency meeting near Leeds.