{"id":95272,"date":"2017-03-24T01:31:28","date_gmt":"2017-03-24T05:31:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=95272"},"modified":"2017-03-24T01:31:28","modified_gmt":"2017-03-24T05:31:28","slug":"british-ex-con-52-carried-out-westminster-attack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2017\/03\/24\/british-ex-con-52-carried-out-westminster-attack\/","title":{"rendered":"British ex con, 52, carried out Westminster attack"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Westminster<\/a>
Westminster Bridge. (ShutterStock)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

BIRMINGHAM, England\u2014The 52-year-old Briton identified as the Westminster Bridge attacker had a raft of convictions\u2014including assault, weapons possession and public order offences\u2014spanning two decades, London police said.<\/p>\n

Khalid Masood, a U.K.-born resident of the West Midlands in central England, was once investigated for extremism by British authorities but was not currently on a terrorism watch list. His convictions ranged from 1983 to 2003.<\/p>\n

He \u201cwas not the subject of any current investigations and there was no prior intelligence about his intent to mount a terrorist attack,\u201d police said Thursday.<\/p>\n

Police raided a home in the central city of Birmingham was where Masood lived until late last year, a neighbour said. Shown a photo of him, Iwona Romek said \u201cthat is 100 per cent\u201d the man who lived next door to her for about five months.<\/p>\n

Romek said he had a wife and a child about 6 years old whom he would take to school. She said he rarely left home in the evening.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe seemed like a normal family man who liked to take care of his garden,\u201d she said. But one day, she said, he packed the household up in a black van and then they were gone.<\/p>\n

Many suspects in British terrorist attacks or plots have had roots in Birmingham, England’s second-largest city, and several local mosques have been linked to extremist clerics.<\/p>\n

Without naming him, the Islamic State group claimed responsibility Thursday for the London attack on Wednesday that left four dead including the attacker and wounded over 30 people. It said he \u201ccarried out the operation in response to calls for targeting citizens of the coalition\u201d fighting IS in Syria and Iraq.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BIRMINGHAM, England\u2014The 52-year-old Briton identified as the Westminster Bridge attacker had a raft of convictions\u2014including assault, weapons possession and public …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":95284,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1145,16,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headline","category-news","category-news-w","mauthors-paisley-dodds","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95272\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}