The individual who crashed a car into barriers outside the United Kingdom’s Houses of Parliament on Tuesday, injuring three people, has been identified as Salih Khater, a 29-year-old British citizen on Sudanese origin. The suspect is in police custody.
The Metropolitan Police searched the suspect’s apartment in Birmingham on Wednesday, another property in the same city and a third in Nottingham, AP reported.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan told the BBC that authorities are considering turning part of the area around Parliament into a pedestrian zone. “I’m an advocate of pedestrianising part of Parliament Square,” he said. “There are now very attractive small bollards in place which actually stop vehicles hitting pedestrians or buildings. We’ve had temporary solutions over the last 18 months, but I think we need a permanent solution to the fact that we now know terrorists will target pedestrians, will target buildings.”
Khater was detained under the Terrorism Act and taken to a police station in south London. Investigators said they want to understand the motivation and circumstances of the crash. Scotland Yard’s head of counter-terrorism Neil Basu said the police are treating it as a terror-related incident “given that this appears to be a deliberate act, the method, and this being an iconic site.”
British Transport Police said it will increase patrols in England, Wales and Scotland and that its officers will be “highly visible” on trains and at stations. But Basu added that there was “no intelligence at this time of further danger” to London or the United Kingdom.
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