London crash suspect's detention extended

UK counter-terrorism police have been granted a warrant to detain the man suspected of carrying out a terrorist attack outside the UK parliament until Monday.

Scotland Yard says officers have obtained a warrant of further detention in relation to the 29-year-man, who has been named as Salih Khater.

"A warrant of further detention was granted this afternoon (Wednesday) by Westminster Magistrates' Court until Monday, 20 August and the 29-year-old man remains in custody at a south London police station," a Scotland Yard statement said.

Earlier on Wednesday officials at a Birmingham mosque said Khater, a UK national originally from Sudan, told members of the Sudanese community he was travelling to London for an appointment to obtain a visa to visit his homeland.

The ex-student, a keen footballer, is said to have used his own car to drive from Birmingham to the capital a day before the appointment.

Khater was detained after a car crashed outside the Houses of Parliament in London on Tuesday morning.

Speaking at a press conference, a trustee of Birmingham Central Mosque, Nassar Mahmood, said inquiries in the local Sudanese community suggested Khater did not worship at the mosque and had shown no signs of radicalisation.

Mahmood said: "Like the rest of the community of the UK, the people of Birmingham and the Birmingham Central Mosque are surprised, shocked and saddened by the incident at Westminster."

Mahmood added: "We made some inquiries within the Sudanese community around the mosque and the picture we are getting is that he was on his way to the Sudanese embassy.

"Some of them know him personally. He wasn't known to be a fervent worshipper and as far as we know he never attended the mosque here.

"Nobody knows the true picture yet. The police have not charged him so I would caution against rushing to apportion guilt."

Police believe the car was deliberately driven into pedestrians and cyclists, injuring three people, before ramming a security barrier outside parliament in Westminster.

A spokesman for Coventry University told the Daily Telegraph newspaper Khater had studied accountancy from September 2017 until May 2018 but failed his first year course and lost his place.

In a statement, police said officers were still searching one address in the city of Birmingham but had concluded their investigations at two other properties in Birmingham and Nottingham.

Video footage showed the car veering across the road and into a security lane leading to parliament before smashing into the barrier. No one else was in the vehicle at the time and no weapons have been found.

The Fiesta was driven down to London from Birmingham on Monday night and was then in the Tottenham Court Road area, near the UK capital's main shopping district, for about four hours, police said.

Police said the incident appeared to be the second terrorist attack at the parliament building in just under 18 months, after a British-born Muslim convert killed four people on nearby Westminster Bridge in March 2017.