The London terrorist, a 52-year-old English teacher who was radicalized

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he rented the all-terrain car with which he killed three people and injured 29, before stabbing a policeman on the premises of the British Parliament and shooting himself dead.

How could a 52-year-old English teacher be radicalized? Precisely his age is one of the elements that attracts attention since most of the terrorists responsible for the latest attacks with the 'brand' of the Islamic State in Europe were young, mostly between 20 and 30 years old (Salah Abdeslam, Intellectual author and sole living suspect in the Paris attacks aaster solutions europe usa online, he is 26 years old; Mohamed Lahouauej, author of the Nice attack, 31 years old; the el Bakroaui brothers, authors of the Brussels attacks, 30 and 27 years old).

The childhood of this British soccer lover passed normally. In the image above, taken in 1980, he is seen after participating in a college charity game, the Huntleys Secondary School. His classmates describe him as a popular, brilliant and athletic student.

But in the life of Khalid Masood, baptized Adrian Russel, as reported by the British police, there are several episodes that explain his conversion to Islam and his subsequent radicalization.

Photograph of Khalid Masood, the terrorist author of the London massacre. REUTERS

Racism, Saudi Arabia and the visits of a cleric

The first takes place in 2000 when Masood attacks a cafe owner with a knife after a discussion on "racial issues" . The event takes place in Sussex, a quiet town where Masood is one of the few black people . Following the Masood incident - he was sentenced to two years in prison; Years later, he would be sentenced again for a similar incident - and his family have to move.

In 2005, Masood begins working in Saudi Arabia as an English teacher at the General Civil Aviation Authority in Jeddah (the second largest city in the country). A year earlier, he had married a Muslim woman.

Four years later, Masood returns to the United Kingdom and resides for two years in Luton, where he would have received visits from a well-known Islamist cleric, Anjem Choudary, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison for radicalizing young people. Monica, a neighbor of this time describes him as "a shadow" and remembers that he was often dressed "in Muslim clothing".

Masood was raised with his single mother before his conversion to Islam, which occurred on his way through prison. According to The Daily Mail reveals , he was arrested 2003 was for stabbing in the face a man, who was seriously injured and needed cosmetic surgery to recover from the wounds. He served several months in prison and was behind bars where he was "indoctrinated" by a group of extremist prisoners.

His Birmingham neighbors described him as a big, taciturn, religious man . His love of bodybuilding also dates back to the time he spent in prison. "He was a nice guy, who spent a lot of time tending the garden and plants," said his neighbor Iwona Romek. "When I saw the images on television, .recognized him as the man who lived next door. The police woke us up at night, pounding on the entrance to his house and shouting: 'Open the door, open the door!'".

The Islamic State (IS) meanwhile claimed responsibility for the attack , alleging that it was carried out by "a soldier of the caliphate". The jihadist organization announced it in a brief message broadcast by its related news agency Al Amaq, as happened in the attacks inspired by the group in Nice and Berlin .

Scotland Yard believes that Masood - twice detained for "public offense" and for possession of a "white weapon" - acted on his own account and was a "lone wolf" . Hours after the attack, however, the police detained eight people in six operations in various parts of the country, mainly in Birmingham and London, on charges of preparing terrorist attacks. In another operation carried out this Friday, the Police have detained two other "significant" people related to the attack.

At a press conference before police headquarters, Scotland Yard anti-terror unit chief Mark Rowley said that of the two detainees, one was in the West Midlands in central England and the other in north-west England .

Masood was born in Kent County. As revealed by the chain 'Skynews' he was a fan of 'bodybuilding' . Scotland Yard has claimed that it had not been "the subject of an investigation" and that there were no intelligence reports relating it to terrorist activities or to the preparation of attacks.

"Inspired by international terrorism"

However, the police have acknowledged that MI5 came to follow in its footsteps long ago due to its possible connections with Islamic extremism and that it was known by several 'aliases' at the time of its last arrest in 2003 (the previous one was in 1983). . Scotland Yard acknowledged that it acted "inspired by international terrorism".

According to the IS message released by the Al Amaq agency, the attack could have been effectively inspired by the group led by Abu Bakr al Baghdadi and his calls to attack in the West , which discards the thesis of an onslaught directly directed from Syria or Iraq.

It is also the same terminology used by the news agency in the attacks on a Christmas market in Berlin last December and Nice in July. In both cases, the IS tried to appropriate the tragedy through a statement released a day later by Al Amaq. In the aforementioned attacks, the author was branded as a "soldier of the caliphate" who had answered the group's call to strike the nations that participate in the international coalition that bombards their positions in Syria and Iraq.

The first details about the terrorist, who died after the shooting and in the hospital, were given by Prime Minister Theresa May in Parliament itself, which reopened its doors in the early hours of the morning and in a sign of so many signs of "return to the normality " with which the British Government responded to the terrorist attack.

May stressed that he was in any case "a peripheral figure" and "was not part of the recent investigations by the intelligence services" and warned that "there is no reason to believe that there may be other imminent attacks", so the alert Terrorist will continue as before to the second highest level, "severe risk".

Tribute to victims

"We are not scared," proclaimed the conservative leader, echoing the slogan spread since last night on social networks. "Our resolution will never falter in the face of terrorism," he stressed, at the time of urging the British to respond to the attack with "a million acts of normality."

"We are going to give an answer that denies victory to our enemies," he said. "An answer that prevents them from winning and that shows that we will never give up ... and see for themselves the best city on Earth. "

The unusual parliamentary session, the day after the five-hour "deadbolt" of the attack that also forced May's evacuation in a police camouflage car, was preceded by a minute of silence for the fatalities. The parliamentarians then paid tribute to Keith Palmer , 48, who was stabbed to death by the terrorist in the square that precedes the entrance to Parliament.

There was also a special mention for Aysha Frade, the Spanish teacher with Galician roots, who died trampled on Westminster Bridge, as well as the American Kurt Cohran, 54, a native of Utah, who was celebrating the 25th wedding anniversary together to his wife, Melissa.

Of the 29 injured, twelve are British and the rest of various nationalities , especially French, Korean and Romanian, such as the architect Andreea Cristea , who was rescued after jumping into the River Thames to avoid being run over. At least seven of the wounded are in critical condition.




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