The man who carried out a deadly car ramming and stabbing attack near the UK Houses of Parliament was a former English teacher working at the institution controlling Saudi Arabia’s civil aviation, a report says.
Citing a copy of Khalid Masood’s CV, Britain’s The Sun daily made the revelation in a report published on Friday.
Masood, who reportedly received his first conviction in 1983 at the age of 19, was found guilty in a string of other criminal cases until 2003, a year before he gained a TESOL certificate that allowed him to take up teaching positions in the Saudi city of Yanbu in 2005 and subsequently at Saudi Arabia’s General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA) in Jeddah.
Five months after his return to the UK in spring 2009, he started working as a “senior English teacher” at a TEFL college in Luton.
Meanwhile, the Saudi embassy in London said in a statement on its Twitter account on Friday that during his time in the Arab country, “Masood did not appear on the security services’ radar and does not have a criminal record in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”
Earlier on Friday, media reports said Masood was once investigated by MI5 for violent extremism but was discounted as a threat.
“The Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia wishes to clarify that Khalid Masood was in Saudi Arabia from November 2005 to November 2006 and April 2008 to April 2009, when he worked as an English teacher having first obtained a work visa,” the embassy said in a statement. “In 2015, he obtained an Umra visa through an approved travel agent and was in the Kingdom from the 3rd-8th March.” http://abcnews.go.com/
The Wednesday attack near the British parliament premises on Westminster Bridge left four people dead and at least 50 others injured. The assailant was later shot dead by police.
The Daesh Takfiri terrorist group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
Press statement regarding the Westminster terror attack pic.twitter.com/X2YXXarXwH
— Saudi Embassy UK (@SaudiEmbassyUK) March 24, 2017
