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The Latest: London attacker’s mother ‘saddened and numbed’

The Latest: London attacker’s mother ‘saddened and numbed’
Floral tributes to the victims of the Westminster attack are placed outside the Palace of Westminster, London. (AP)
Updated 27 March 2017

The Latest: London attacker’s mother ‘saddened and numbed’

The Latest: London attacker’s mother ‘saddened and numbed’

LONDON: The mother of Westminster attacker Khalid Masood says she is “deeply shocked, saddened and numbed” by his murderous actions.
In a statement released through the police, Janet Ajao says that “since discovering that it was my son that was responsible, I have shed many tears for the people caught up in this horrendous incident.”
Ajao says she wants to make it “absolutely clear” that she does not condone his actions or support the beliefs that led him to carry out the attack.
Masood was born in southern England in 1964 as Adrian Elms, and took the name Adrian Ajao after his stepfather, whom his mother married when he was a small child. Police say he changed his name to Khalid Masood in 2005.
Janet Ajao lives in rural Wales.
A senior British counterterrorism officer says police have found “no evidence” Westminster attacker Khalid Masood was associated with the Daesh group or Al-Qaeda.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu says Masood clearly had “an interest in jihad,” but police have no evidence he discussed his attack with others.
Basu says in a statement that the attack in which Masood used an SUV and knives to kill four people in London “appears to be based on low sophistication, low tech, low cost techniques copied from other attacks.”
He says Masood was not a “subject of interest” for counterterror police or the intelligence services before last week’s attack.