David Amess murder suspect Ali Harbi Ali, 25, appears at the Old Bailey

The terror suspect accused of stabbing to death Sir David Amess has made his first appearance at the Old Bailey by video-link from high security Belmarsh prison.

He is accused of stabbing to death the Conservative MP for Southend West during a constituency surgery in Leigh-on-Sea in Essex.

The charges against him allege he murdered Sir David, 69, last Friday and prepared acts of terrorism between May 1 2019 and September this year.

The defendant, wearing a grey sweatshirt, lifted up his face mask to confirm his name and date of birth, during the hearing. He will face trial next year.

He was remanded in custody during a 13-minute hearing at Westminster Magistrates’ Court yesterday. The court heard Ali allegedly settled on a plot to kill an MP two years ago, initially focusing on two politicians other than Sir David.  

The veteran MP was pronounced dead at the scene at 1.10pm and a preliminary post-mortem report gave the cause of death as multiple stab wounds to the chest. 

Ali is said to have carried out reconnaissance at one of their homes, the surgery of another and the Houses of Parliament, detectives discovered after investigating his Oyster Card travel within London and CCTV footage. He was located outside the home of one politician in March, June and July this year, however he was not convinced the address was correct.

Ali is said to have watched the Houses of Parliament but had decided that an attack there was ‘not practical’ because of the high level of security. He was also picked up outside another MP’s constituency surgery last month.

Prosecutors allege that Ali was affiliated with Islamic State and targeted Sir David over the MP’s voting record in support of air strikes on Syria. 

He is said to have prepared for terrorist acts from May 1, 2019 to September 28 this year. Ali was wearing a grey tracksuit and thick-rimmed black glasses and smiled to his legal team as he entered the court. He then sat silently throughout yesterday’s hearing, only speaking to confirm his name, age, and address.     

Sir David suffered multiple stab wounds in last Friday’s attack and despite the heroic efforts of paramedics to save his life, the MP died of his injuries.  

The 69-year-old father of five was ambushed at his Friday meeting with the public and stabbed 17 times in a frenzied attack. After a week of questioning by Scotland Yard as well as searches of his home and electronic devices, Ali was charged with murder and another charge of preparation of terrorist acts.  

Nick Price, Head of the CPS Special Crime and Counter Terrorism Division, said: ‘The CPS has authorised charges against Ali Harbi Ali for the murder of MP Sir David Amess. We will submit to the court that this murder has a terrorist connection, namely that it had both religious and ideological motivations. He has also been charged with the preparation of terrorist acts. This follows a review of the evidence gathered by the Metropolitan Police in its investigation’.   

Matt Jukes, Assistant Commissioner for Specialist Operations, said: ‘I want to send my deepest condolences to the family, friends and colleagues of Sir David Amess, who died so tragically last Friday. Sir David’s dedication to his family, his constituents and his community, and his positive impact on the lives of so many has shone through’. 

Speaking outside New Scotland Yard, Mr Jukes added: ‘A large team of detectives have been working around the clock to find out as much as we can about what happened and why.

‘That work has included searches at a number of London addresses. Our advanced forensics team analysed digital devices and carried out a painstaking review of CCTV footage.

‘If there are members of the public who have further information that might help the investigation, I would urge them to come forward. Every piece of information in investigations like these is important and you will not be wasting our time.’

Sir David’s death during his weekly constituency surgery has shocked Britain and is likely to change the way MPs are protected and meet voters forever.

In a heartbreaking statement his family called for people to ‘set aside hatred’, adding: ‘Nobody should die in that way. Nobody. Whatever one’s race, religious or political beliefs, be tolerant and try to understand. We are absolutely broken, but we will survive and carry on for the sake of a wonderful and inspiring man.’  

Ali is the son of a former Sudanese diplomat who was born in Britain and raised in Croydon. After falling out with his parents he decided to move in with an aunt and her sons in a council house in the upmarket North London enclave of Kentish Town, in a street of £2million three-storey townhouses. 

His move to north London is understood to have coincided with a deterioration in his relationship with his Somali-born parents. Ali’s parents split up when he was young and his father returned to Somalia. One neighbour, who has known the family for twenty years, said that Ali spoke of hopes of becoming a doctor with the NHS, saying: ‘He told me he’d been doing exams and he seemed westernised.’ 

Police and intelligence officials were initially mystified about why the 69-year-old Tory politician was singled out for attack. Reports had initially suggested that Sir David, a devout Roman Catholic and prominent Brexiteer who was MP for Southend West, had been selected because of his political views or religion.

Investigators now believe that there may have been no specific motive for the targeting of Sir David. One government insider told the paper: ‘He was unlucky. He was not targeted because of his political party. David Amess was not specifically targeted.’  

Police are also investigating the alleged close ties between Sir David and Qatar. The Tory MP was chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on the Gulf state and returned from his latest visit there on Wednesday last week. 

Sir David’s family said their hearts had been ‘shattered’ by his ‘cruel and violent death’ at a constituency surgery in Essex. They said they could not understand why the ‘patriot and a man of peace’ was targeted by a knifeman he had never met. 

Officers raided Ali’s ‘childhood home’ in Croydon on Friday. It comes as Met Police officers were yesterday seen guarding a property in a tree-lined street in North London, where Ali is believed to currently live. Police were seen walking into the property and a blue and yellow tent was erected outside the council-owned property on the street, where homes sell for around £2million. 

It comes as intelligence officials are believed to have warned Ministers that Britain could face a wave of terrorist attacks carried out by ‘bedroom radicals’ – so-called ‘lone wolf’ terrorists who turned to extremism after spending months at home during the Covid lockdown. 

‘Counter-terror police and MI5 have been concerned for some time that once we emerged out of lockdown there would be more people out on the streets and more targets for the terrorists,’ one security source told The Telegraph.

As police continued to quiz the London-born suspect, his father spoke of the family’s shock. Harbi Ali Kullane, a former media and communications adviser to the Prime Minister of Somalia, said he was ‘traumatised’ by his son’s arrest. 

He added: ‘At this particular moment we are going through [an] unprecedented and horrific situation.’

Mr Kullane spoke out as details emerged about the suspected killer’s upbringing in south London.

Detectives have been piecing together the suspect’s movements in the hours before Friday’s attack. 

They have not found any obvious affiliation to a terrorist group and do not believe Ali had ever previously met Sir David. They have found nothing to suggest the MP was attacked because of his voting record, ‘but that could well come out as a factor’, a source said. 

Another neighbour described the household as ‘polite, respectful and decent’. He said: ‘There was often a tallish chap outside who would be around 25. He would smoke outside. He’d always say hello.

‘They’re a good family. This is off the scale. It’s horrendous.

‘They were all great. I can’t believe it. They were polite and respectful. It’s incredible’.

Mr Kullane returned to the UK two years ago to have a heart operation on the NHS, neighbours said. He lives with his sister in the north London district of Bounds Green, and the home was also visited by police over the weekend.

Police also searched the Croydon house where the suspect’s mother and siblings live. Officers spent more than 24 hours scouring the premises and took the family away, with police warning them that they would not be returning for a while.

A neighbour, who asked not to be named, said: ‘The kids used to go to a mosque nearby, but I didn’t think they did any more. They’ve been very good neighbours.’

Sir David’s family said their hearts had been ‘shattered’ by his ‘cruel and violent death’ at a constituency surgery in Essex. They said they could not understand why the ‘patriot and a man of peace’ was targeted by a knifeman he had never met.

The 69-year-old father of five was ambushed at his Friday meeting with the public and stabbed 17 times in a frenzied attack. In a heartbreaking statement his family called for people to ‘set aside hatred’, adding: ‘Nobody should die in that way. Nobody.

‘Whatever one’s race, religious or political beliefs, be tolerant and try to understand. We are absolutely broken, but we will survive and carry on for the sake of a wonderful and inspiring man.’  

The Home Office scheme, which has an annual budget of around £40million, has been under scrutiny for years after a series of terrorists slipped through its net, including Reading attacker Khairi Saadallah. 

But the independent review did not start formally until earlier this year and has still not reported back to Miss Patel.

Former justice secretary Robert Buckland called for a shake-up of Prevent to ensure a more ‘joined-up’ approach. He said more co-operation between schools, the NHS and other public agencies was required to ensure security forces could intervene early.

‘I very much hope that when it comes to community supervision and community involvement, that it is much more joined-up between health services, education,’ he told Times Radio.

‘And that element of being joined-up is what we really need to work on urgently.’

He added: ‘There may be records or information from schools or colleges or from the health service which can tell us much more about individuals and their activities. We need to join this up much more effectively because what we’re talking about here is community prevention.

‘We’ve got to make sure that every arm of the state is absolutely working together in order to understand as much as possible about these individuals, and then to intervene if we judge the risk to be so significant that an intervention could prevent the sort of appalling incident that we saw not just last week but also in the Jo Cox case and other examples.’

Mrs Cox, the Labour MP for Batley and Spen, was murdered by a far-Right fanatic in the street in 2016 as she was about to carry out a constituency surgery. 

A Tory former Defence Minister doubled-down on his call for a temporary suspension of public meetings between MPs and their constituents, as he warned ‘there could be a copycat-style attack’ following the killing of Sir David. 

Tobias Ellwood, the chairman of the Commons Defence Select Committee, urged a ‘pause in face-to-face’ consultations between parliamentarians and members of the public until a safety review had been completed in the wake of Sir David’s death on Friday. 

His proposal was shot down by defiant Conservatives including former Cabinet minister David Davis. Labour’s Harriet Harman called for an official review of MPs’ safety, while ex-Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott also rallied against ‘airport-style screening’ – but told the BBC she would support meeting constituents behind a screen to prevent possible stab attacks. 

Miss Patel insisted MPs must keep meeting voters, telling the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show it would be ‘unacceptable’ for the killing to ‘break the link between an elected representative and their democratic role, responsibility and duty to the people who elected them’. 

However, the killing of Sir David at Belfairs Methodist Church in Leigh-on-Sea as he met with Southend West constituents has prompted the Government to look at ensuring every MP gets police on guard at their weekly surgeries – a move backed by Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle. 

Speaking to Channel 4, Mr Ellwood doubled-down on his proposal, warning: ‘Ultimately we have to recognise that there could be a copycat-style attack. The police have already made that clear. Let’s make sure that our lifestyles and the way we go about is not altered, that they do not win. But we need to do that in a cognitive way to make sure that MPs, staff and indeed the general public are kept safe.’

The MP for Bournemouth East, who was hailed as a hero for his attempts to save the life of Pc Keith Palmer during the Westminster terror attack in 2017, also told the broadcaster that he had discussed the security implications of the withdrawal from Afghanistan for terrorism and extremism with Sir David last week as they visited Doha in Qatar.