Another terrorist attack

[Gob]

The man held by police on suspicion of killing three people in Reading is Khairi Saadallah.

The 25-year-old from Reading was arrested at the scene and police say they are not looking for anyone else over the "terrorist incident".

Security sources told the BBC he is originally from Libya.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he was "appalled and sickened" by the attack in a park on Saturday evening.

Mr Johnson said he had spoken to the chief constable of Thames Valley Police and praised the bravery of the unarmed officers who arrested the suspect.

A witness told the BBC that he saw a man moving between groups of people in Forbury Gardens, a park in Reading town centre, trying to stab them.

Three other people were injured in the attack.

Thames Valley Police's chief constable, John Campbell, told reporters that a man was arrested within five minutes of the first emergency call made to police - at 18:56 BST on Saturday.

He said lives had been "devastated" by the incident, but added that there was not believed to be a wider risk to the public and there was nothing to suggest anyone else was involved in the attack.

Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu, head of counter-terrorism policing, described it as an "atrocity".

The UK's terrorism threat level was downgraded from "severe" to "substantial" - meaning an attack is likely - in November 2019.

Substantial is the third of five ratings at which the threat level can stand.

[Scooter]

Based on the scant details provided, it's difficult to see why this is being characterized as a "terrorist" attack. Perhaps the police have more information that they are not sharing, but until they do...

[ex-khobar Andy]

For what it may or may not be worth, the first reports I saw of this an hour or so ago, said that it was possible that this was more of a mental heath incident.

And obviously this is anecdotal, but I can say that the Libyan people I knew when I lived there (now 40+ years ago) were the most generous I have ever known. I am so saddened by what has happened to that country.

[Gob]

The first terrorist knife attack in Britain remains the highest-profile, because of the target – a soldier – and the fact the bloody aftermath was caught on mobile phone footage. The killing of Fusilier Lee Rigby outside Woolwich barracks in May 2013 by Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale was by no means the last of such low-tech attacks in Britain, however.

Several were foiled, including one planned by Brusthom Ziamani, a 19-year-old Muslim convert caught wandering the streets of east London with a knife, hammer and Isis flag hunting for a target the following year.

Three months later, in November 2014, Nadir Syed, 23, from Hounslow, west London, was arrested after buying an 11in kitchen knife at a shop in Ealing with a plan to attack a Remembrance Day poppy- seller.

Junead Khan, 25, a delivery driver from Luton, was arrested in July 2015 as he planned to stage a road accident and then kill a US airman outside a base in East Anglia with a combat knife. In December that year, Muhiddin Mire tried to behead a man at Leytonstone tube station in east London, shouting: “This is for Syria, I’m going to spill your blood”.

The following year, four men who called themselves the “Musketeers” were arrested for plotting an attack with a pipe bomb and a meat cleaver with the word “Kafir” [infidel] scratched into the blade after MI5 and police set up a fake courier company to catch them.

Then, in March 2017, Khalid Masood killed five people in Westminster, running over four victims on the bridge and then stabbing PC Keith Palmer to death. That sparked a series of copycat plots, with Ummariyat Mirza, 21, a trainee accountant from Alum Rock in Birmingham, arrested a week later after promising his wife he would murder people on their wedding day.

The next month, Mina Dich, 42, and her daughters Rizlaine Boular, 20, and Safaa Boular, 16, from Willesden in north London, were arrested after discussing a knife attack on a police officer outside parliament, in a plot they dubbed the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party.

In June 2017, Khuram Butt, 27, Rachid Redouane, 32, and Youssef Zaghba, 22, ran down and killed two people on London Bridge and then stabbed to death six more using kitchen knives they had strapped to their wrists.

Then, last December, there was another knife attack on London Bridge when Usman Khan, 28, from Stoke-on-Trent, who had formerly been jailed for terror offences, killed two former Cambridge University students at a prisoner rehabilitation event at the Fishmonger’s Hall.

In February this year, Sudesh Faraz Amman, 20, from Harrow, North London, another former terrorism prisoner, was shot dead by undercover police officers as he launched a knife attack in Streatham, south London.

[RayThom]

Based on the scant details provided, it's difficult to see why this is being characterized as a "terrorist" attack. Perhaps the police have more information that they are not sharing, but until they do...

It may very well have been more a hate crime, less a terrorist attack. Regardless, it still strikes terror in the hearts of anyone who cares about humanity, and civil rights.

Reading terror attack victims were beautiful and proud members of the LGBT+ community
https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/06/22/r ... saadallah/

[Gob]

All three men murdered were gay, and they were sat in a park near the local gay bar. There is some question now as to whether this was a homophobic attack.