Media starts covering for UK car jihadi: ‘He’s quiet, kind, it’s just an accident’

An accident? Even the British police said he deliberately plowed his car at 50 MPH into a crowd of bicyclists. But this ridiculous Daily Mail article is the kind of thing we see after every jihad terror attack: attempts to deflect attention away from the fact that it was a jihad attack, attempts to confuse the issue, and even attempts to claim victim status for the perpetrator. Watch now for the story about how mosques in the UK are bracing for a “backlash” — we hear that after every jihad attack, and yet a backlash never materializes. Enemedia hysteria operates on one plane, and reality on another.

“‘He’s quiet, kind, it’s just an accident’: Friend of Sudanese immigrant held over Westminster terror attack tells of his shock as man’s family insist he is a ‘normal person’ with no fanatical ideas,” by Martin Robinson, James Fielding, Paul Thompson, Tracey Kandohla, Rebecca Camber and Andy Dolan, Daily Mail, August 14, 2018 (thanks to Inexion):

A friend of the Westminster terror suspect described him as a ‘kind, quiet’ and ‘decent’ person who is ‘always smiling’ -and that the car crash outside the Houses of Parliament was an ‘definitely an accident’.

Speaking to ITV News this evening, Anwar Khater said he was sure Salih Khater did not mean to injure people yesterday when his car rammed through pedestrians and cyclists during the morning rush-hour.

He said: ‘You can take three words to describe any good person, he is. He is very generous, very smiley… even in any event that happens. He is always participating in a good way.

‘All the media and all the stuff now, they are all coming into a lie. Because the accident, it is an accident. It is nothing to do with terrorists, it is nothing to do with any kind of organisation that tries to attack any government department or something like that.’

He added: ‘You don’t expect what happened would be from him. I will put my word on it. It is an accident. It’s definitely an accident.

‘I don’t hear, I don’t listen to any change of characters. He is the same person I saw seven, eight years ago.’

‘The reason he went to London, the reason he was he had been to that area early is because he needed to go early to the embassy for a visa so that’s why he went to London and go see his family back home which he didn’t see for seven, eight years.’

Earlier today, the suspect’s family today insisted he is a ‘normal person’ as it emerged he told friends he was going to London for a Sudanese visa so he could holiday in the country he fled as a refugee.

Salih Khater’s brother Abdullah said they are all in a ‘state of shock’ about his sibling’s carborne rampage outside the Houses of Parliament at 7.30am yesterday morning.

Khater told friends he had a visa appointment at Sudan’s embassy in St James’ Park – less than a mile away from Westminster – and left Birmingham the night before to avoid early morning traffic.

But police believe he cruised the capital for six hours before deliberately ploughing his Ford Fiesta through crowds of cyclists and pedestrians before careering into terror-proof security barriers, narrowly missing two policemen.

Khater came to the UK eight years ago as an asylum seeker fleeing the wartorn Darfur region of Sudan and became a British citizen two years ago after settling in Birmingham.

But security sources told MailOnline today the Home Office had recently told him he was being investigated over ‘irregularities’ in his successful citizenship application.

Friends said he had also been depressed after he was also thrown off his Coventry University accountancy course for failing his first year and was ‘devastated’ when his father and a brother died in the past six months.

MailOnline has asked the Metropolitan Police, West Midlands Police and the Home Office to comment on what they knew about Khater, what he was doing in London and his immigration status. All three have refused.

The terror suspect has been described as a quiet loner who loved Aston Villa, Celine Dion, smoking shisha and whiling away time at an internet cafe below his old flat in the Sparkhill area of Birmingham.

His tenth floor council flat in Birmingham is just ten minutes from the former home of Khalid Masood and police will be probing if he was inspired by his murderous rampage 17 months ago.

Khater grew up in the rural town of Wad Madani, around 150 miles south-east of Khartoum, Sudan, where his mother and father farmed millet, and came to the UK in around 2010 as an asylum seeker.

The Westminster car attack suspect spent the night in a Birmingham internet cafe before heading to London, MailOnline can reveal.

Police seized computer number two Salih Khater used for less than half an hour, along with the hard drive and CCTV at the Bunna Internet Cafe in Sparkbrook, Birmingham.

Detectives will be probing what he was doing online and if someone was helping him plot an attack.

Mohammed Hussein told MailOnline how Khater, 29, a regular customer had been into his cafe three times on Sunday, twice to buy a baguette and coffee and the third time to use a computer – just hours before the Westminster attack which injured three cyclists on Monday morning.

He said: ‘I last saw him in here about 9.30-10pm shortly before we closed. He was using computer number two and was on it for less than 30 minutes having paid fifty pence. He had been in twice earlier in the day to buy a baguette and coffee but didn’t use the computer, that was only in the evening

‘He has been a customer for the last two years and I know him because he used to rent the flat alone above the cafe until four months ago. He moved out to find a cheaper place.’

Mr Hussein, 32, who has spoken to police investigating the attack, said: ‘He’s a good guy, a normal guy and what’s happened is shocking. We don’t know anything about it but it possible he was using the internet to plan it, he was behaving as he normally does, nothing different. He is a quiet guy, a loner.’

Fellow Sudanese Mr Hussein added: ‘I hope it doesn’t give my cafe a bad name, it’s not good for business.’

His manager, who saw the terror suspect on Sunday, explained: ‘This us a really popular place and I was shocked when I heard what had happened in London. I was having stomach pain. It gives the local Sudanese community here a really bad reputation.’

The cafe owner told how officers turned up yesterday afternoon to seize the computer and CCTV to aid their Investigation.

He said: ‘Police said it would be very helpful. They took the computer, it’s serial number, the hard drive and CCTV footage. They were grateful for assistance.’

Friends said he was recently devastated when his brother and father died in recent months, reportedly in a car crash.

In another blow he was studying accountancy at Coventry University until May but had his place ‘terminated’ after failing the first year, while friends said his poor English meant he couldn’t complete a pharmacy course 12 months earlier.

As police investigate the motive behind the attack, it emerged:

• Sudanese-born Briton Salih Khater, 29, was the man arrested by police after his Ford Fiesta ploughed through pedestrians and cyclists before smashing into security barriers yesterday; 
• Home Office understood to have been investigating potential irregularities in his successful British citizenship application; 
• Muslim community in Birmingham say he told Sudanese friends he was heading to the embassy for a visa on the day of the attack; 
• Police say suspect is not co-operating but have arrested him on suspicion of terror offences and attempted murder; 
• Searches of his Birmingham council flat continue today and police are analysing PC from internet cafe he used on the day before launching attack; 
• He drove from Birmingham to London on Monday night and spent time in Tottenham Court Road and Whitehall before circling Westminster until attack at 7.37am;
• Khater had recently failed courses in Birmingham and Coventry with friends saying he had problems with English;
• He is the son of millet farmers in Sudan and was devastated when his brother and father died in a car crash, friend says
• Parliament Square could be pedestrianised after another Westminster carborne attack;

Friends say they are shocked he may have launched a terror attack.

Dr Mahdi Khair, who plays football with Salih, said: ‘He wasn’t the kind of man who you’d throw the allegation of terrorist attack at. He was so polite and a decent chap.

‘He never got into conflict with any of us at all. He said he worked for a security company and had lost his dad and brother. He always made peace with everybody. He was working very hard.

‘I don’t know why they’re accusing him. Anything could have happened. Something could have happened to the car or he could have had mental issues.’

Massar Mahmood, a trustee of Birmingham’s Central Mosque, said: ‘From our own inquries at the Mosque and from people of a similar background in the Sudan community he has shown no sign of doing any harm to anyone.’

He said: ‘There is no sign that he had been radicalised. He was not a fervent worshipper and had not shown any signs of that.

‘As far as we known he was trying to get a visa. He went the night before and presume he spent the time there travelling round to wait to visit the embassy.’

Ali Mohamed, an elder in Birmingham’s Sudanese community, said from their inquiries Khater was not deeply religious and they had been told he travelled to London to get a visa from the embassy.

‘He had all the paperwork in his car. As a British national it is difficult to get a visa to Sudan. That is why he had gone to London’, he said.

Mohamed said Khater was well known in the community and was a keen footballer supporter of Birmingham’s Aston Villa.

‘He is a very sociable and stable person. We don’t know if he was tired and got into the incident.

‘He was a very good person and nothing related to abnormal activity. He is a stable person and very a good person and everyone think he was a good person.’

Neighbours described him as a quiet man who regularly visited an internet cafe and a shisha lounge near to his home.

Local resident Ahmen Abdi said he was a man who ‘never spoke to anybody’.

‘I recognised his picture from the news and I was shocked,’ Mr Abdi said.

One customer at the internet cafe visited by Khater, who would only give his name as Adam, said he had been served coffee by Khater and that he was a polite and apparently humble man.

‘I am still in shock. I’ve known him for about a year and he is a very, very good man,” he told the Press Association.

‘I can’t see him doing anything stupid.

‘He was polite, humble and he kept himself to himself. The whole community is upset. I can’t see it not being an accident – I couldn’t see him hurting a fly, never mind a human being.’…