Restaurant owner fed cops, medics for free during UK attack

London, March 26

A Muslim-born restaurateur has fed hundreds of emergency service workers for free in the aftermath of a deadly terror attack on the UK Parliament.

Ibrahim Dogus, who was ordered to close his three eateries, however decided to keep open one of them, which was yards from Westminster Bridge, so that police officers had a place to eat and keep warm.

“I went to one of the officers and said ‘I can shut all the businesses, but I want you guys and all the emergency staff to use this place for food, drinks, and for warmth for free’,” he was quoted as saying by The Independent.

“All these great people need our support. Some of them tried to give us money—one said, ‘I’m a police officer, you have to take my money.’ We said, ‘We’re not going to take any money from you.”

Dogus kept the restaurant open “until the last officer was fed”. He estimates he fed between 300 and 500 emergency workers from the police, London Ambulance Service, and London Fire Brigade, the paper said.

“We wanted to play our role in terms of supporting the emergency crew. This was happening right at our doorstep. If you walk two seconds on my doorstep I would be on the bridge.

“I use the bridge to take my kids to school, not on that day.” All three of Dogus’ Kurdish restaurants—Troia, Cucina and Westminster Kitchen—were inside an exclusion zone cordoned off by police in the aftermath of Wednesday’s attack.

Dogus said he was born into a Muslim family but does not currently practice any religion.

Five people were killed and 50 injured when a man, inspired by radical Islamist ideology, mowed down pedestrians on a bridge and stabbed a police officer outside parliament complex before being shot dead by Scotland Yard officers. — PTI