24/03/2017 Newsnight

What do we now know about what drove Khalid Masood to become the man

who murdered four people and injured 50 others in Westminster

Does he fit the profile of such an extreme and violent attacker?

What is so extraordinary about Khalid Masood? Known as Adrian elms

where he grew up in Tunbridge Wells, in the garden of England.

Westminster under attack - Who, what or where should be held

Also tonight - Did the Government give sweeteners to Nissan to stay

We came really close today, but we came up short.

A big setback for Donald Trump as his health care bill

crashes in Congress - killed by his own party.

I think we'll end up with a truly great health

care bill in the future, after this mess known

Today police issued an appeal for information

to anyone who can shed light on whether the Westminster attacker,

Khalid Masood, acted alone or was directed by others.

Police made two more "significant" arrests,

taking the total to 11 - six of whom were released tonight

Three vehicles were seized by police after an armed raid

Masood, who had used a number of aliases,

was believed to have been living in the West Midlands

He had previously spent time in West Sussex, East Sussex,

London and went to school in Tunbridge Wells, Kent.

John Sweeney has been looking more into the man responsible

for the deaths of four people and injuring 50 others.

Khalid Masood grew up in the garden of England. This is the story of a

Home Counties boy, who went on to strike terror in the heart of

London. Masood was born Adrian Elms on Christmas Day, 1964. His birth

was registered in Dartford, Kent. But he grew up in Tunbridge Wells,

where he most often used the surname Ajao, that of his mother's new

husband. He went to a secondary modern school

in Tunbridge Wells, where he was known as Adrian Ajao, a mixed race

people in a primarily white school. He was always laughing, always

joking. He was good at sport and played rugby well. Just an

unassuming guy. At some point after finishing school, Adrian moved to

this village in Sussex. Convicted for criminal damage at the age of

18, he stood out. I was under the impression that he was a black man

in a white man's pub, you know? And he was going to fight for it. I

said, look. I don't care if you are black or white. I am quite happy to

have a drink with you. If you want to buy new one now, I'm happy to

take it! -- by new one. I cannot even remember if he bought me one or

not, he shook my hand. Was he funny and intelligent? Yes. But some

people in the village saw a nasty side to Adrian. In 2000, Adrian

Elms, that was his name before he changed it to Masood, got into a

fight with another local. In the village boozer.

The fight turned nasty, the local paper reported there were racial

overtones and the other man ended up with a slash on the side of his face

needing 20 stitches. Adrian Elms was sent to prison. When you heard the

news about the attack in Westminster, what was your reaction?

Well, it was put over that it was a terrorist attack. But, having known

him and what I found out tonight, he was just a crazy man. Mind you, I

don't know how you could recognise him since, but he was not a

terrorist here. A drink? He was, yes. From here, to prison to

Eastbourne, and there, the first suggestion of an interest in is land

-- drinker. A friend at the time has told the BBC that he was using

cocaine at the time and also reading the Koran. In 2003 there was a fight

outside of this nursing home and in December he was found guilty of

possessing a knife. His last conviction aged just shy of 40. He

was still Adrian Elms. In November 2005, he first travelled

to Saudi Arabia, and used the name Khalid Masood. In all committee

spent two years there, teaching English. He toured here, at the

Saudi Civil Aviation Authority, in Jenner.

-- he taught here. In 2010, Khalid Masood was back in Blighty, in

Luton, we believe, teaching English. He had two children at the time he

was here, they appeared to be primary school children. He had a

people carrier and would load his children into a people carrier with

child seats. He was a portly gentleman, and frequently wearing

tracksuit bottoms. And also would be wearing slip on moccasins, quite

relaxed attire, I would say. Always gardening. By last year, he popped

up in London's East End. There had been searches there two.

He moved to Birmingham, most recently it seems in Ladywood.

Before that, Winson Green. He would help me to jump-start my car. He was

nice, a nice family. He would drop his kids at school. Normal stuff.

You would never think anything dodgy, of all of their neighbours on

the road. Last week, Khalid Masood returned south to the part of the

country where Adrian Elms had grown up. He stayed here, in this room. He

was joking, smiling and friendly. He was a very friendly person when he

came in. Actually, the receptionist said that he was a lovely guest, she

liked him. She put comments in the system. But he was a nice guest.

Then, the nice guest got into his car and drove to Westminster Bridge.

Khalid Masood spent time in three separate prisons

There has been a well-documented problem of Islamist radicalisation

Last year, Ian Acheson wrote a report for the Government

Thank you for joining me this evening. There is a lot we don't

know about Khalid Masood. That is very clear but we do know that he

spent time in Lewes prison, where you spent a short time as a governor

there. And a couple of other prisons, Weiland and Ford, which you

visited. Can you give me an idea that when you visited them, how or

where you would have been of the problem of radicalisation there?

Firstly, it's important to emphasise that we have no idea at this point

in time whether his periods of time in custody were relevant at all to

what he became, which was a murderous terrorist. Or, whether

they had significance. We need to be careful indeed about speculation. I

spent time working in the three prisoners he has been in during his

time in custody. They are very different, Lewes

prison is a Victorian prison, a multifunctional prison with

different sentences, local to the community. Wayland prison is a rural

prison setting a large area, it is category C and medium security,

which is set over a wide area. Ford is a prison which prisoners coming

to the end of their sentences, sometimes long sentences, will be in

and tested to see if they will survive in open conditions. There

might be an obvious answer, where you are more likely to be

radicalised, or will there be an experience of being exposed to

groups that would be potentially wanting to radicalise you?

Certainly, we drew attention in the report that I did for Michael Gove

to the fact that while the problem was well understood and contained in

the high security prison where the majority of prisoners serving

Stenton says for terror offences were kept, we were not at all clear

in the category C prisons and open prisons in the country, there was

the same level of competence, awareness or intervention to be able

to know what the extent of the problem was in those prisons --

sentences. Or be able to intervene and address that behaviour. If that

is the case, how easy is it to identify a prisoner who could be

influenced by someone wanting to radicalise the new person in the

prison? The ingredients for radicalisation, which we concluded

from our report is a real, present and growing danger in this country,

it is very simple. You need a person with charisma who can

psychologically control and profit eyes hateful ideology.

You need a vulnerable and often highly violent young man, in search

of meaning and in prison for a long period of time, who have committed

serious crimes, and you need a narrative of grievance. Where you

have those three conditions, you will have, in prisons, the ideal

environment for growing this phenomenon. So, you have highlighted

young, in prison for a long time, sentenced for a long time, it almost

contradicts Khalid Masood's history? And if you were to look at Khalid

Masood and look at his past, what similarities could you draw, if any,

of those who have been radicalised? The problem is, the routes into and

out of radicalised behaviour and terrorist intent is extremely

complex. There's been a lot of work and research done by the Henry

Jackson Society, into the biographies of prisoners convicted

of terror offences, and it is difficult to discern a common to

dominate or pattern. It is exceptionally difficult,

especially with the lone actor terrorists as well, and there is

speculation that this man acted alone, but we are not clear yet. The

police are actively investigating what support or help or inspiration

he may have had. They are particularly difficult to identify.

Coming back into prisons, the word I hear from you is "Difficult". The

conclusion I have drawn, correct me if I am wrong, but it is impossible

to eradicate radicalisation in prisons at this time?

There is a huge amount of work in prisons to be done to make them

places where extreme as is driven out, I made a number of

recommendations, I am pleased to say that the government have accepted

those, in order to deal with the problem. They include separating the

most psychologically dangerous extremists from their audiences.

There is intelligence suggesting there are a small number of people

who need separating from people vulnerable to the head for messages,

that's one way we can directly interfere with the process of

radicalisation, it is an urgent issue and I know the government are

tackling it. There are issues about the quality of chaplaincy, the

Islamist chaplaincy in prisons, they need addressing, and a fundamental

issue about support and training for staff, who told us in great numbers

that they were fearful of intervening and promoting British

values in prisons because they simply did not have that

expectation. There are many issues, thank you

very much for joining us. The President who prides himself

in being able to drive a hard bargain and always get the deal done

has suffered a major setback this evening,

despite his determination to repeal and replace Obamacare, his bill has

failed to pass through Congress. President Trump ordered

that the vote was pulled just moments before it was to take place

as support among Republican Our correspondent Laura Bicker

is in Washington. Hello, Laura. What does this mean

for Trump and the Republicans? When it comes to the Republican party,

they look like the party of drama, defeat and disappointment. When it

came down to it, after seven years of promising to repeal and replace

Obamacare, when it came down to the moment of asking, they just could

not do it. They were spared the humiliation of defeat after not

calling the vote, but it does look incredibly embarrassing. It is a

real setback for the Republicans. The right of the party didn't like

the bill, neither did the left. It meant they could not find some

consensus and serious questions will be asked about their governing

abilities going forward. Will they be able to make real decisions? Real

policy decisions. Paul Ryan, House Speaker, dismissed

it as a growing pains of his government, but he will have to go

away and lick his wounds, wondering how to move forward.

President Trump has sold himself as the ultimate deal-maker and when it

came to it, coming to his first attempt at legislation come he came

up short. Sometimes failure is good? You said

there were Douzable -- disagreements that

-- at both ends of the party, maybe it is good for him to fail this time

around? It is interesting, looking at the states which voted for Donald

Trump, thousands within those states would have lost their current health

care insurance if this had gone through. It's interesting to watch

the popularity of Obamacare, the affordable health care right. During

the campaign, under constant attack by Republicans, Donald Trump, and

the Democrats to properly defend it, the popularity of Obamacare went

really far down. And it meant people thought there were real problems

with it, and there are. Some insurance premiums have skyrocketed

and for others, they have very little choice when it comes to their

health care. But, as the repeal and replace has gone through, as people

have been able to look at it and go, what will I lose?

Suddenly, Obamacare seems more popular and you are right, it might

be better for Donald Trump to have left things as they are.

But the Democrats would be the first to admit that something needs to be

done. There are problems within this bill. They say it needs nurturing,

not neglect. They are calling on their Republican colleagues to come

together to go forward, but for now, Obamacare remains in place. It

certainly does, Laura, thank you. It's good to talk to you.

When Nissan announced that it would continue to build new models

and invest in its car plant in Sunderland after the referendum -

there were cheers, not only from the Japanese car-maker's

employees, but also from British politicians keen to show that the UK

Theresa May declared it "fantastic news".

So what made Nissan so confident that a post-Brexit Britain would be

a productive enough environment to keep manufacturing in?

Chris Cook has been digging around and is here with new information.

This is an intriguing outcome, it was the time and still is and to

find out more, you had to submit a Freedom of Information request? Yes,

and they are supposed to take 20 working days to come back, this one

has taken six months. Also, we received this this evening at ten

past six on evening, which is when you do not want journalists looking

at this carefully. Newsnight does not have the same working hours as

other news outlets! We ask for a lot, correspondence between Nissan

and the government and there is a critical letter between Greg Clark

and Nissan sent from the government to Nissan, the smoking gun which we

did not get. The release is full of reductions and unfortunately that is

one of the things the government has committed to eventually releasing

but not for now. Do we know why not? They say because they have committed

to releasing this in the future, they do not need to release this

right now, there is a future publication schedule, which is a

ridiculous excuse but they are sticking with it. There is a smoking

gun and were not allowed to see it but we will in the future. We have

got stuff today. Among the logistics of setting up meetings and one of

the things this shows is how much effort the government was going to

see Nissan, Greg Clark went to Japan, there were meetings and

conference calls and a meeting between somebody from the business

Department and the chair of Nissan on the fringes of the Paris motor

show but also a letter that gives good detail about what Nissan are

asking for, not what they were talking about in relation to Brexit

and trading negotiations, that is redacted but we have something

interesting about other things. Any company would want a shopping list

in times of uncertainty. This and asked for three things. In

mid-October, three things. They wanted tax incentives for people to

buy electric cars, they wanted the government to put more money into

providing charging points and they wanted a change planning laws and

local authorities would have to put in more charging points. That is

what they ask for in mid-October and by the end of November, the

government had opened a consultation on changing the rules around petrol

stations so that they would have to have more charging points, they got

a tax incentive for ultralow emission vehicles and the extra

money for high-speed charging. I will not save the government

definitely did what Nissan asked but it is very striking that all of the

specific demands not about Brexit that were in the power of the

government to deliver, they ask this in mid-October and had them by the

end of November. Should we make clear that what Nissan was asking

for, people would not think that was unreasonable? There is not a wild

U-turn by the government, it does not show corruption or anything else

but it shows that I think it is there to say that the government was

clearly listening to Nissan and we should point out that last autumn,

Nick Watt was reporting that some of these measures appeared to be just

to appease Nissan so there is good reason to think these things are

connected. We don't know when we will get that letter? Some point in

the future! We will be back talking about that. Thank you.

Let's go back to the aftermath of Wednesday's attack in Westminster.

The last place that Khalid Masood was believed to have been

living was Birmingham - a city that has regularly been

Our correspondent David Grossman has been to the city

where most of the arrests, so far by police in relation

Noon in Birmingham and a pause for thought.

In an itinerant life, Khalid Masood had connections to many places,

but this is where he most recently called home.

Others are now, rightly or wrongly, looking

to for explanations for the murder and destruction he caused.

Every time there is a terrorist outrage it seems all eyes and quite

a few accusing fingers are directed towards Birmingham.

And if so, is enough being done to solve it.

Do you think Birmingham has a problem?

I think there is an issue and that is proven statistically,

to see the number of arrests that have been made, the number of plots

that have been planned shows that there is an issue,

a significant in Birmingham in relation to the rest

People have got to stand up to this and say, look,

You are not treading on people's toes, it is not about sensitivities,

it is about making sure that what is conformed to,

the society that we're part of, and were and young people

particularly are being groomed towards radicalisation,

we have to call that out and call it out properly.

At Birmingham Central Mosque, Friday prayers begin

with an unequivocal condemnation of the London attack.

As evil, the congregation were told, as it was un-Islamic.

However, when you ask the Birmingham MP, Khaled Mahmud,

who needs to do more to challenge the processes that lead

lead to radicalisation, top of his list are the city's

You can only challenge them if you happen to

And then we're quite happy to challenge them them.

Because I think the situation is that these people do these

activities by reading the literature from all these websites.

And all these electronic gadgets are so freely available.

People learn radicalisation from those.

Mosques do not teach them to become radicalised.

But Muhammad Afzal is not just the chairman of the mosque.

He is a long-standing and prominent Labour councillor here.

Birmingham is a city where religion and politics mix.

According to Labour's opponents, the result is an unhealthy

We all know that the way voting works in many communities,

you have the block vote, the clan vote, the postal vote

and we know that they are 1-party states, if you will,

and selections are often made by families and packing

So it is difficult to achieve change through the ballot box and often

it is not in people's interests to really rock the vote.

It leads to disempowerment, it leads to poverty,

it leads to people not being able to participate in society and one

of those consequences is that it allows radicalisation

It is one of two Parliamentary constituencies identified by recent

reports as accounting for three quarters of Birmingham's Islamist

This group of lads blame social media, definitely

What has been going on in London and all these links and everything,

we're the first people to speak up about these things and say,

we don't agree with what is going on and we are deeply sorry

for the people that have been hurt and to their families as well.

Answering the question, I don't think...

In Sparkbrook, I don't think there is radicalisation

but it is easy to say because this area, the majority are Muslim

And it is easy to target this area or certain areas and say,

these areas are radicalised and so on.

We think that this is a tight-knit community

Mohammed Ashfak is the director of KIKIT, an organisation that,

with public money, tries to turn round vulnerable lives.

Radicalisation, they believe, is the same product

We stopped two youngsters from going over to Syria that

had a range of issues, they were addicted to drugs

They actually have their tickets booked, they were going to fly over

and they were being groomed by going online and watching videos of Isis.

It is safeguarding, that is how we approached it

And people who try and radicalise other people, it is a grooming

process, the same way you get with child sexual exploitation.

Just the same way as you get with any other grooming process.

At the Birmingham Bullring there was another vigil today.

Very different from the one outside the Town Hall earlier.

This has been organised by a group called Stand Up To Racism

and the concern here is that the crimes of a few are

The fact that awful things happen does not mean that

And I think the onus should be on how do we come together, how do

But at the same time, how do we do so in a manner that

doesn't give more oxygen to the very people who celebrate

And I would say those people are two kinds.

People like Isis, who want to betray an image that they are

And also the far right groups, who then exploit the tensions that

That is what we should be looking at, taking that

step back and thinking, is this a helpful way to respond?

How do we frame the problem and get to the roots

Although another terrorist attack linked to Birmingham causes

discomfort here, in a sense it makes agreement easier.

Everyone condemns and everyone extends sympathy.

What is far harder to find, though, is a consensus

Let's discuss the root causes of these problems -

I'm joined by David Goodhart, author of the Road to Somewhere

and Miqdaad Versi from the Muslim Council of Britain.

Do you recognise the picture in that report? Integration and

multiculturalism failing in places like that? I do recognise that

picture and I think the terrorist attack in Westminster was from a man

who was alone will, unbalanced, but we clearly have a problem with

Islamic extremism in Britain, 3000 people under constant surveillance

and even if you take the 3% in certain opinion polls who support

violent extremism, that are still 100,000 British Muslims, a worrying

figure. Muslims tend to live somewhat more segregated than other

minorities. Is that fair? It is worth challenging one of those

points, 3% of Muslims sympathise with terrorism, the previous ICN

poll showed that 4% of the general population sympathise with

terrorism. Lots of opinion polls said 7% or 8% of the Muslim

community. The point is, the way we ask the question presents a certain

answer and a 4% of the population have sympathy with terrorism, that

would be hundreds of thousands of people so let us move away from the

idea that Muslims sympathise with terrorism. A very small number. This

is not scaremongering. How can we prevent these kids, most of them are

kids were young men, getting diverted on their life track into

this new identity, this disaffected identity that seems to be attractive

to them. This is a problem for liberal societies, to provide

attractive national identities for all of our kids. All of our kids

should belong to Britain and feel that Britain belongs to them and it

seems to be quite difficult in our kind of society to provide those

identities. You said that young people, Khalid Masood was 52? A

disproportionate number are under 35. We firstly have to distinguish

between the idea of segregation and extremism, the idea that one leads

to another is not a simple process that is clear, people who are

segregated are more like to be extremists. I don't think there is

evidence. I would agree, extremists come from everywhere, all levels of

education, people who have been to Cambridge. Segregation is not the

problem? It is a problem in itself and it is a separate problem, it may

have some relation to extremism in some cases but the fact that Muslims

live more separately from the rest of society than other minorities is

an issue that we should continue to talk about and do something about.

Birmingham is a very segregated city but it goes back several decades

when many of the white people moved to North fields and different

minorities became concentrated in particular areas and we can learn

from the mistakes of the past and allowing that to happen, to lean

against those clustering tendencies. It is worth noting that Muslims have

become less segregated in the last ten years and many reports sure

we're doing a lot of positive things. We sometimes do not

celebrate our diversity. If you look that great role models, the Mayor of

London, Nadiya Hussain. Is that the way to improve the situation? To

make sure that perhaps if you are a strong faith, you are not seen as

someone outside the group willing to integrate? And make it clear that

young Muslims have very good opportunities in this country, many

Muslims are concentrated in the bottom part of the income spectrum

but lots of Muslims are not and even some of the Muslim groups like

Bangladeshis who have historically not done so well educationally or in

the economy and they are starting to do a lot better. As many Bangladeshi

youths go to Russell group universities as white British kids

and that is quite an achievement. What is to be done when we look at

Birmingham and say there is a problem and we can see sources of

extremism and councillors admit there is a problem. What is the

solution? We need to identify exactly what the problem is and do

different things, in Birmingham we have Sparkbrook or different cases

where there are significant numbers of arrests of people who have been

accused of terrorism but if you remove one of those rates, resulting

in 14 people arrested, the percentage is similar to the rest of

the country so we have to be careful but -- careful about looking at

figures and when it comes to Birmingham, the people on the

ground, the grassroots community, they are the people we need to look

at to search for the right brain. There is very little that can be

done about somebody with a knife who comes into Parliament. -- the right

way. The opinion poll a few months ago showed that most Muslims have

the same political worries as the rest of the population, there is not

a huge gap but we have quite large parts of the Muslim leadership in

this country who do paint a very negative picture of the country,

particularly those from an Islamist background, and we want the Muslim

leadership to be more positive about Britain in some ways and help

provide those images and ideas. Great to talk to both of you. Thank

you very much for your time. That's all we have time for. Have a lovely