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Westminster attack “could have been avoided” if MI5 was “savvy enough”

Published on: 30 Oct 2018

The terrorist behind 2017’s Westminster attack could have been stopped if police and MI5 were more savvy, according to one of the victims’ family members.

Khalid Masood had been on the security radar for 12 years before he crashed a rental car into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge, killing four, before fatally stabbing PC Keith Palmer outside parliament on March 22nd 2017.

Inquests for the five victims were told that Mr Masood had mixed with known extremists and was the subject of two MI5 investigations, The Times reports.

He had appeared on the radar of the security services repeatedly since 2004 when he was released from prison after a violent assault, with the last time being a year before the attack.

Mr Masood was judged to be low risk by MI5 and had become a “closed subject of interest”.

John Frade - whose wife Aysha, a 44-year-old mother of two, was killed on the bridge - called for improvements in the way MI5 identifies potential threats.

“The whole family was destroyed on the back of that incident, an incident that could have been avoided if the security service had been savvy enough to pick it all up and piece it together,” Mr Frade said.