LONDON: A terror suspect accused of crashing his car into the security barriers surrounding Britain’s Houses of Parliament appeared in court Monday charged with attempted murder.
Sudanese-born British national Salih Khater is accused of driving into a group of cyclists and then police officers last Tuesday.
He appeared at Westminster Magistrates Court in London on Monday where judge Emma Arbuthnot, England’s chief magistrate, remanded him in custody following a seven-minute hearing.
The 29-year-old is charged with two counts of attempted murder of members of the public and of police officers. He did not enter a plea on Monday.
Khater will next appear for another short hearing at the Old Bailey in London, England’s central criminal court, on August 31.
Wearing a grey t-shirt and white trousers, Khater confirmed his name, date of birth, nationality and home address in Birmingham, central England.
Prosecutor Samuel Main alleged that Khater “accelerated into a group of cyclists,” then, having driven through them, “veered off the open road, down a chute and toward police officers” guarding the parliament building.
The incident followed a “short but intensive period of reconnaissance,” he alleged.
Main said detectives had made extensive enquiries and had come up with “no evidence” of an accident, mechanical failure, a medical episode or disorder, intention to commit suicide or a crisis in Khater’s personal circumstances.
The prosecutor alleged it was a “deliberately calculated attack.”
Main said the choice of location and the attempt to kill police officers suggested “that the defendant intended to make a political statement.”
Prosecutors were therefore treating the case “as terrorism,” Main told Arbuthnot.
The location was close to that of another attack in March last year when Khalid Masood, a 52-year-old Briton, mowed down pedestrians, killing five people before fatally stabbing a police officer.
Westminster terror suspect in court over UK parliament ‘attack’
Westminster terror suspect in court over UK parliament ‘attack’
- Sudanese-born British national Salih Khater is accused of driving into a group of cyclists and then police officers - charged with attempted murder
- He appeared at Westminster Magistrates Court in London on Monday
Sequestered Suu Kyi overshadows military-run Myanmar election
- Suu Kyi’s reputation abroad has been heavily tarnished over her government’s handling of the Rohingya crisis
YANGON: Ousted Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been siloed in military detention since a 2021 coup, but her absence looms large over junta-run polls the generals are touting as a return to democracy.
The Nobel Peace Prize laureate was once the darling of foreign diplomats, with legions of supporters at home and a reputation for redeeming Myanmar from a history of iron-fisted martial rule.
Her followers swept a landslide victory in Myanmar’s last elections in 2020 but the military voided the vote, dissolved her National League for Democracy party and has jailed her in total seclusion.
As she disappeared and a decade-long democratic experiment was halted, activists rose up — first as street protesters and then as guerrilla rebels battling the military in an all-consuming civil war.
Suu Kyi’s reputation abroad has been heavily tarnished over her government’s handling of the Rohingya crisis.
But for her many followers in Myanmar, her name is still a byword for democracy, and her absence on the ballot, an indictment it will be neither free nor fair.
The octogenarian — known in Myanmar as “The Lady” and famed for wearing flowers in her hair — remains under lock and key as her junta jailers hold polls overwriting her 2020 victory. The second of the three-phase election began Sunday, with Suu Kyi’s constituency of Kawhmu outside Yangon being contested by parties cleared to run in the heavily restricted poll.
Suu Kyi has spent around two decades of her life in military detention — but in a striking contradiction, she is the daughter of the founder of Myanmar’s armed forces.
She was born on June 19, 1945, in Japanese-occupied Yangon during the final weeks of WWII.
Her father, Aung San, fought for and against both the British and the Japanese colonizers as he sought to secure independence for his country.
