TERROR NUT WAS A BENEFITS CHEAT

Cops probing monster over fiddles

MONSTER Westminster terrorist Khalid Masood funded his killing spree by fiddling the benefits system. The scumbag was living on state handouts and cops reckon he was a “serial” welfare cheat.

BRAIN-WASHED terror scumbag Khalid Masood funded his murderous killing spree with taxpayers’ cash.

The Daily Star Sunday can reveal the monster, who neighbours have described as “stinking” of body odour, was living on state handouts.

Police are now probing claims he was a serial benefits cheat.

The hulking madman, who brought carnage to Westminster by mowing down and killing three pedestrians before murdering an unarmed police officer, claimed hundreds of pounds a month in housing benefit and income support.

Muslim convert Masood, who was originally named Adrian, apparently hated the country of his birth.

But his loathing of his country didn’t stop him taking taxpayers’ cash after his teaching work dried up.

And anti-terror officers probing the attack believe he used a string of aliases to illegally grab even more cash.

Last night a security source said: “He was a washed-up nobody who longed to be a somebody.

“He was living on state handouts – money taken out of the pay packets of hardworking, decent folk.

“The security services are now looking into every aspect of his life. It is believed that he was taking cash he wasn’t entitled to by using a number of different names, bank accounts and addresses.”

Body-building enthusiast Masood, 52, was born in Dartford, Kent. His mother Janet Ajao gave birth when she was just 17 and brought him up as Adrian Russell Ajao.

The married father-of-three who had a middle-class upbringing spent years moving round the country – and the prison system – with a host of different identities, including Adrian Elms.

The probe comes as a mother revealed she stopped her daughter from going to play at the home of Masood because he gave her “the chills”.

Sabrina Hussain revealed that her eightyear-old girl Sky was best friends with Masood’s youngest daughter Mariam and had been invited round several times.

But she stopped her from going because she felt something “wasn’t quite right”.

Masood would take his children, nineyear-old Mariam and Mohammed, eight, to Brookfields Primary School in Hockley, Birmingham, every day.

It has emerged that parents complained to teachers about Masood’s poor personal hygiene but the school was reluctant to confront him about it.

The 52-year-old had been living in a threestorey maisonette with his wife and children in the Winson Green area of Birmingham until December last year when they left abruptly.

The reason Mariam gave to school friends was that they were going to London to look after her “sick granny”.

Yet Masood returned to Birmingham after Christmas by himself and is thought to have been living in, or occasionally visiting, a run-down bedsit.

In the months before the terror attack in Westminster, he survived on a diet of Red Bull and pistachio nuts while going to the gym. Ms Hussain said that when she real- ised Masood was responsible for Wednesday’s attack, in which he was shot dead by police, her heart went out to one victim in particular, Aysha Frade.

She said: “I just keep thinking back to that poor woman, she was on her way to pick her children up from school, something he used to do every day, when he ran her down in his car and killed her.”

Ms Hussain added: “He used to give me the chills when I saw him at the school gates. I can’t tell you why, because he was never rude or abusive.

“Call it intuition because something about him just didn’t sit right with me. He’d turn up in Islamic robes and only really speak to other Muslim men.”

Ms Hussain said her girl and his daughter “were best friends at school”.

She said: “They used to play together in the playground all the time. She was invited to their home after school several times but I never let her go because I thought something was off with the family.

“The children were lovely and mixed with youngsters of other faiths but they left the school just before Christmas.

“The reason his daughter gave for them leaving was because they were going to London to care for her sick granny.” Ms Hussain added: “I know his personal hygiene used to upset other parents who complained to the head but they couldn’t really do much as he’s an adult.”

Another parent, who asked not to be named, said: “I was one of those who complained about his body odour because it was really strong, especially in a breeze.”

Only one person, a man aged 58 who was arrested in Birmingham, remains in custody after a 27-year-old man was released yesterday.

A total of 11 people were initially held after raids across the country following the Westminster atrocity.