MOMENT GUN COPS WRESTLED HIM TO GROUND
THIS is the dramatic moment officers leapt on a Taliban bomb-maker as he approached Downing Street to carry out a knife rampage.
Extraordinary footage captured on armed officers’ body-worn camera shows how the smirking terrorist was bundled to the ground by counter-terror police as tourists around him scattered in panic on April 27 last year.
When Khalid Ali was asked whether he had any weapons, he grinned, saying: ‘You’ll find out’.
One officer searching him who found three knives tucked in the waistband of his trousers, in his pockets and rucksack, exclaimed in shock: ‘Another knife – third knife – f***ing hell, racking them up.’ Another officer found a mobile phone case belonging to a handset that Ali had thrown into the Thames a few minutes earlier. The device contained images of armed police, stab vests and the MI6 building as well as jihadi songs he had been listening to as he carried out surveillance on potential targets.
When police swooped, Ali’s finger was still bleeding after he cut himself as he got the knives out of their packaging.
Just moments earlier he was seen on CCTV strolling through Victoria station with his hands stuffed in his pockets secretly clutching the handle of two of his three blades.
The knives were bought earlier that day at a Wilko store, where Ali was seen in the aisles pretending to yawn and flinging his arms wide to conceal a quick practice jab with the blades.
When he was later interviewed by police, Ali appeared strangely calm.
He said: ‘I’ve been training and fighting against Western troops, be it American or British.’
In the bizarre interview, when asked what he was doing in Whitehall, he asked for a chess board to explain how he planned to deliver his ‘message’ to the Prime Minister.