Failure to treat London terror attacker Khalid Masood’s psychosis is to blame, not ISIS
THIS WEEK presenter Andrew Neil has described Khalid Masood as a “pathetic Poundland terrorist in an estate car.”
I couldn’t have put it better myself.
For this was not, as first assumed, a long-planned attack on the heart of UK democracy by a puppet of ISIS on a promise of “72 eternal virgins in heaven”.
It was almost certainly the evil work of a mentally ill loner who, for reasons yet unclear, just happened to have converted to Islam some years ago.
Now, with the benefit of the hindsight such atrocities always afford us, it seems the signs of his disturbed mind were always there.
Lee Lawrence, a former friend of Adrian Ajao’s (as Masood was then known), recalls seeing him slash the face of a landlord during a fracas at a pub in East Sussex in 2000.
He says: “I tried to calm him down but his eyes were rolling, he was off his head. He started saying, ‘What have I done, what am I doing? I’m getting help. I just want blood, I dream about killing someone’.”
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Seventeen years later he did just that — hiring a car and ploughing in to innocent pedestrians on Westminster Bridge before stabbing PC Keith Palmer to death.
“I’m getting help.”
If true, then even he knew he had a problem way back then.
So what help did he get? And if he admitted “I just want blood”, what was done to try to treat his psychosis at the time?
All we know so far is that he was sent to prison for two years for the pub attack, emerged back on our streets having converted to Islam and that his relationship with Jane Harvey — the mother of his two daughters — broke down.
Lee adds: “She couldn’t put up with him any more. There was something inside his brain he couldn’t control.”
And yet his life started out so well.
He had a loving mother and was a high-achieving, happy schoolboy.
He was a popular and “cool” young man and managed to have a normal family life for many years.
But every so often, as Lee witnessed, there was a “total loss of control”.
Another came in 2003, when he attacked a man with a knife; then again in 2004, when his second wife fled their home “in fear” of his violence and controlling nature, and finally, last week’s mass killing spree.
Something tells me that, though they could never have predicted the circumstances nor body count, it will come as no great surprise to the authorities that Ajao/Masood lost control of his anger yet again.
A report last year revealed that one person a week is now killed by a mental health patient — and that killings, or suspected killings, were up by an astonishing 92 per cent since 2009.
The burning question is, why?
Is it linked to an increase in drug abuse?
Is it simply because the NHS lacks the funds to identify and/or treat those who harbour potentially violent mental health issues?
Or a combination of both?
A friend of Masood’s second wife says of him: “He was a psychopath.
“He came from a nice family, had everything, but there was something very wrong with him.”
Indeed there was. And those in authority clearly knew it.
This must be investigated thoroughly if we are ever going to minimise the chances of another random and unhinged act by a similarly psychotic attacker in the future.
JUSTGIVING IT THE ELBOW
JUSTGIVING is refusing to waive its five per cent commission on the £700,000 raised in aid of PC Keith Palmer on the grounds that “all causes are worthy”.
None less so, one suspects, than the “cause” of its annual profits.
Presumably, it feels it would set a precedent, but surely there can be notable exceptions to every rule?
Indeed, word reaches me that virginmoneygiving.com has agreed to waive its usual two per cent fee for the fundraising page set up by the work colleagues of John Frade, whose wife Aysha was killed in the attack as she walked to collect their two children from school.
So, as my small, one-woman protest, I have cancelled my JustGiving page set up for a forthcoming bike ride in aid of Help for Heroes and switched it to virginmoney.com.
If others do the same (or go to any of the other fundraising sites that don’t skim as much off the top) it might hit JustGiving where it hurts – in its pocket.
- If you would like to donate to Aysha’s family, go to .
Breed apart
SHORTLY after telling her social media, er, fans that her next car would be an environmentally friendly Toyota Prius, Lily Allen is currently swanning about town in a new, £48,000, gas-guzzling Mercedes.
Yawn.
Yet again, showing her true colours as one of the new breed of right-on, “do as we say, not as we do” slebs.
— THE gorgeous Elizabeth Hurley, 51, says: “Joan Collins is married to a fabulous man 32 years younger than her.
“In which case, I can date an 18-year-old... anything goes!”
Form an orderly queue, chaps.
BERRY UNKIND
MARY BERRY has stirred up controversy with a throwaway remark that her fellow TV cook Delia Smith might be at a disadvantage because she never had children to critique her culinary efforts.
What patent nonsense.
Firstly, I have kids and can barely boil an egg without burning it.
Secondly, since when did kids have culinary critical skills beyond which pizza is best and whether Nando’s has put too much spice on its piri piri chicken?
That aside, I once interviewed the lovely Delia who, out of nowhere, asked me if I had children.
When I replied that I did, she looked wistful and asked: “Do you think that I would have made a good mother?”
Many assume she’s childless because her career came first, but that poignant question proves that nothing could be further from the truth.
— AUTHOR Clifford Brooks says he can train a cat to use a normal toilet.
Puh. When he trains it to lift the seat too, then I’ll be impressed.
DON'T GET AS MUSH
HOT on the heels of ever-shrinking chocolate bars, I notice that a box of my favourite instant soup (Ainsley Harriott’s Wild Mushroom, as you ask) now has only three packets in it instead of four.
“Brexit”, presumably?
It seems to get the blame for everything else.
— TOP GEAR co-host and former racing driver Chris Harris admits he’s still honing his presenting skills and fellow presenter Matt LeBlanc is helping him out.
He says: “It is like going to school every day because Matt constantly tells me what to do.
“Hopefully I will get better as time goes on.”
Actually, Chris, you’re just fine as you are.
And besides, taking presenting lessons from “Mogadon Matt” is like asking Joey to explain the Theory of Relativity.
— MANCHESTER United have sacked octogenarian steward Vince Miller after 30 years of loyal service because he put his arm around a female colleague and called her “love”.
Saints bloody preserve us.
As every rational woman knows, there’s “love” and there’s “love”.
The first, which undoubtedly relates to Vince et al, is along the lines of a cheery: “Beautiful day, isn’t it love?”
Then there’s, “look, love, best not to get involved with things you don’t really understand”, or words to that effect.
It’s not the word itself, stoopid, it’s the tone.