This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/800
July 14, 2005
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20050714/BLASTBOMBERS14/TPInternational/Europe LEEDS -- The transformation of four young British men into terrorists appears to have taken place at a government-funded storefront youth centre in Leeds that, according to youth workers, was a hub of radical Islamist activity.
The centre was sealed off and searched by police yesterday after three of its workers said in an interview on the street outside that at least two of the suicide bombers had been "very regular" visitors at all hours to the Hamara Youth Access Point, and a third had been seen there occasionally.
"It had become so radical and so hateful that I asked if I could stop working there," said one of the workers, who along with two others described the storefront drop-in centre as a hub of radical Muslim politics and a hotbed of Islamic organizing, routinely hosting mysterious figures to speak about extremist politics.
All three workers, two of them white British Christians, live in the poor Beeston area, which was home to two of the bombers, Shahzad Tanweer, 22, and Hasib Hussain, 18.
"It had become so radical and so hateful that I asked if I could stop working there," said one of the workers, who along with two others described the storefront drop-in centre as a hub of radical Muslim politics and a hotbed of Islamic organizing, routinely hosting mysterious figures to speak about extremist politics.
All three workers, two of them white British Christians, live in the poor Beeston area, which was home to two of the bombers, Shahzad Tanweer, 22, and Hasib Hussain, 18.
third bomber, 30-year-old Mohammed Sadique Khan, also lived in this tight-knit community in Leeds until a few months ago, when he moved with his wife and their infant child to Dewsbury, not far to the south, where he worked as a well-respected primary-school teacher.
It appears that this modest youth centre is the point where these three young men converged with the fourth bomber and a leading figure who was being sought by police last night.
"It's fair to say that there was some kind of recruiting going on here," one of the workers said. "Some of the youth workers were really involved with it, and it got to the point where they were acting really hostile to anyone who wasn't their kind of Muslim."
As the interview was taking place on the street, police cordoned off the building, expelled people from neighbouring buildings and began a detailed search of the youth centre.
The centre receives funding from the British government and the European Union, as well as charitable funds, and as such is officially secular and non-political. But in practice, it was neither. On its walls were posters from the Respect Party, an extremist pro-Islamic party founded by MP George Galloway, that showed Israeli soldiers pointing rifles at Palestinian children. When some workers complained about these, they were harassed by other staffers.
The hostile, politicized mood at the centre stands in stark contrast to the descriptions of the young bombers made by their relatives and neighbours yesterday.
They are well known in Beeston, a culturally mixed neighbourhood whose rundown houses and barren storefronts reveal a history of economic troubles. The most prosperous of them, Mr. Tanweer, worked at the fish-and-chips shop owned by his father, a few hundred metres up the road.
"He wasn't political at all -- he never mentioned Iraq or anything. We talked every day, and all he wanted to talk about was sports and cars," said Iftiahar Hussain, 27, as he opened the shop at 11:30 yesterday morning. "I wish I knew what was influencing him."
The answer to that question does not seem to sit in any of the mosques that pepper the area, most of them small and barren. None of the bombers werestrongly connected with a particular mosque, although they all began praying five times a day as they became more devout during the past two years.
"When you're that religious, you just go to whichever mosque happens to be near what you're doing," said Nusrut Hussain, a close friend of one of Mr. Tanweer's sisters.
Like most Muslims in this part of Leeds, her devotion to the faith is fairly light. "I'm not especially religious -- I'll bring my kids to the mosque in the morning and drop them off there to get some religious teaching."
Most people here feel that none of the mosques have adopted the highly radical, anti-Western politics that have turned some London houses of worship into Islamist recruiting centres. They say, however, that study groups have formed on the edges of congregations that may teach a much more political form of Islam.
Family and friends of the young men repeatedly said yesterday that they had seen no indication that they had adopted such influences. Although they had become more devoutly religious and travelled to Pakistan for study trips, it is not uncommon for naturalized children of immigrants in this part of England to become more devout than their secularized parents. Terrorism is another matter.
"I never saw any sign of any politics in him -- I mean, when he read the paper he would only look at the sports pages," Mr. Tanweer's uncle, Bashir Ahmed, said in an interview yesterday. "He had been religious for some time, and I thought on Wednesday that he was going to one of his religious meetings. He was going to them all the time."
Mr. Ahmed said that he was "devastated and confused" by his nephew's turn to terrorism, and said that he must have fallen under the influence of mysterious forces.
But the young men, despite having fallen into religion, were not entirely pure. Both Mr. Tanweer and Hasib Hussain were arrested last year, for disorderly conduct and shoplifting, respectively, and were released after being cautioned.
The fourth bomber's identity has still not been revealed, although police told reporters yesterday that they had found his body in the Piccadilly Line train that blew up between King's Cross and Russell Square stations.
It appears that he may have lived in a house just down the street from the Hamara youth centre. That house, which neighbours said was home to brothers who were raised by their mother and were close friends of some of the other bombers, was sealed off by police yesterday.
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London's invisible bombers
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London's invisible bombers
Screams, silence, then the girl in the mask.Sarah Keenlyside was on the Edgware Road train when it was hit. This is her story. IT WAS THE SILENCE THAT WAS SCARY. First there was a terrifying bang and the people around me were jolted off their feet. I was sitting beside a partition so I must have banged my shoulder, but in the initial shock I didn't feel a thing. For a few moments there was nothing, no movement, no sound. A woman across the carriage caught my eye. We stared at each other, bewildered, not understanding what had happened. Then the silence was broken by a man screaming. It was the most horrific sound I have heard in my life and I don't think I'll ever forget it. A man was clearly trapped under the Circle Line train and his wailing echoed the length of the tunnel. "Help me. Please, somebody help me. Help! Help!" The agony and desperation in his voice was sickening. Just then, smoke began to drift into the carriage and people started panicking. Until this point I had comforted myself with the idea that we had just taken a bend too fast and hit the side of the tunnel. It seems ridiculous now. Two men standing next to me tried to force open the doors to get some air into the carriage, which was now full of dust. One wedged his bag between the doors. The man's screams continued, the noise becoming more harrowing and desperate by the minute. By this time I'd walked backwards to the very last carriage. A man went to the driver's door and began to hammer it down. Some people screamed at him to stop, others were becoming hysterical. An Underground worker in a bright orange jacket ran past, shouting for us to stay calm. I found myself hoping someone would sort out the man on the track because I didn't think I could bear his screams much longer. Then suddenly the rear door opened and I was surprised how high off the ground we were. There was a good 5ft drop onto the rails. Someone shouted that the electricity hadn't been turned off. More panic. Then London Underground men started to help us down one by one onto the tracks, warning us to walk on the gravel and not to trip over the cables. As we had been sitting near the back, we were the first to get off. I looked back down the side of the train into the darkness. I could make out two or three bodies lying on the track, but there was no movement and the screaming had stopped. The silence was even worse than the screaming: I realised people had probably died. Upstairs the ticket hall was oddly quiet. Outside, a crowd was gathering and worried, curious faces stared at us as we emerged. I turned around and was shocked to see bloodied, burnt people coming out of nowhere behind me. The first was a girl in her early twenties. The skin was peeling off the entire right-hand side of her face, her tights had been burnt off her bloodied legs and hung like cobwebs around her ankles. She had a gash on her forehead. She told me her name was Davinia and asked me to telephone her boyfriend. She would become the woman in the mask on the front of the next day's papers. She handed me her mobile. It was charred and wet with blood. She was confused and thought she had already spoken to him but when I got through — just before the mobile network collapsed — I found myself breaking the news that she had been in the bombing and was injured but still alive. She began to cry. Her face was burning and she was desperate for someone to help relieve her pain. I cursed my ignorance of first aid. She wanted me to pour cold water on her, but was that the right thing to do? There was no sign of an ambulance. We had moved back into the station by now and a woman near me suddenly fainted. A man opposite me sat in devastated silence. I couldn't make out his eyes through the blood on his face. There were four more men in the same state of shock. I sat down with Davinia, who was hysterically flapping her hands around her face to cool it down. Strangely, we started chatting and found out we were from the same part of Essex. We also live in the same part of London. She had been on her way to work and was looking forward to picking up a new car. A Ford Focus. I became aware of a charred, burning smell and looked around me before I realised it was coming from her. There was nothing left of her eyelashes but charred stubs, and her hair had been badly singed. She told me how she remembered the fireball coming towards her in the carriage. She was begging for some of the water that staff from London Underground were pouring into cups. I grabbed one and made to hand it to her but, trembling, she asked me to pour it over her head and legs instead. She was being so brave. Shaking, she asked me why the ambulance hadn't come. It had been more than 20 minutes since the accident and there was still no sign of help. Eventually, we heard the sirens in the distance. At first the paramedics seemed to mill around at the entrance, surveying the scene. Frustrated, I asked: "Why the hell has it taken you so long?" They ignored me. They asked my companion: "Do you know what day it is?" in order to categorise the seriousness of her injuries. They then issued coloured wrist tags with Priority 1, 2 and 3 on them. I think she was Priority 2. Looking at her, I wondered what on earth Priority 1 might look like. They dressed her face, but liquid from the medicated cloth ran into her eyes and she kept asking me to wipe them for her. When I looked down at my hands, I realised for the first time that they were dirty and speckled with blood. My boyfriend rang and I began to realise that we were part of something bigger. We were moved into Marks & Spencers but 45 minutes later were told by the police to move away from the windows and panic spread again. A policeman discovered a black bag and asked us whether we knew who it belonged to. When nobody responded, I grabbed my companion's bag and fled with other survivors to the Hilton Metropole hotel. The Tube may have reopened and though I want to get back on a train, I just can't trust myself yet. I don't know how long that will last. I just can't get that terrified man's screaming out of my head. The suicide bombersSUSPECT BOMBER ONE Shehzad Tanweer, aged 20 to 22, lived in Leeds, nothern England, and is widely reported to have blown himself up on a subway train near Aldgate station, east London. The bombing left seven people dead. Tanweer, who sometimes worked at his family's fish and chip shop in a suburb of Leeds, was a good student who played cricket for a local team, friends told the British press. With a brother and two sisters, he was described as a sporty man who loved martial arts, drove his father's Mercedes around the streets and had many friends in the Beeston area of the city. "He is as sound as a pound," said close friend, Azi Mohammed. "The idea that he was involved in terrorism or extremism is ridiculous. The idea that he went to London and exploded a bomb is unbelievable." Tanweer is thought to have gone to Lawnswood school in Beeston, before studying sports science at Leeds University. He did not have a regular job and is believed to have recently travelled to Pakistan. His father, Mohammed Mumtaz, was originally from the Faisalabad region of Pakistan. SUSPECT BOMBER TWO Mohammed Sadique Khan, 30, from Dewsbury, a town about 14 kilometres from Leeds is thought to have attacked a subway train at Edgware Road station, west London. Seven people died in the attack. The man was the married father of an eight-month-old baby. He met his wife, whom he married two years ago, while a student at Leeds University. Khan's wife had been working as an area support assistant for the council in Leeds before giving birth to their child. SUSPECT BOMBER THREE Hasib Hussain, 19, also from Leeds, is widely accused of blowing himself up on the number 30 double-decker bus near Tavistock Square in Bloomsbury, central London almost one hour after the subway bombings. The attack left 13 people dead. An anxious call from Hussain's mother who had been unable to contact her son immediately after the blasts reportedly led the police to unravel the identity of the four bombers by studying CCTV footage. Hussein had gone "a bit wild" as a younger teenager according to reports, but had become devoutly religious about 18 months ago after returning from a trip to Pakistan to visit his relatives. He lived with his Pakistani-born factory worker parents in a rundown suburb of Leeds. As a child, he studied at the Matthew Murray High School. SUSPECT BOMBER FOUR No name has been cited in the British press about the fourth suspect, who is believed to have blown himself up on a train between Russell Square and King's Cross stations — the deadliest of the four attacks, leaving at least 25 people dead. The man is believed to hail from Luton, north of London, where he met his three colleagues, who drove to the town in rented cars. The four bombers are believed to have left Luton, which has a large Muslim population, and travelled together to King's Cross on a commuter train. Upon arrival at the station in central London they said their farewells, before launching their attacks in which more than 50 people died. Potential mastermindsThe revelation that a team of "home-grown" terrorists were behind the London bombings was the nightmare scenario for security services. Not only will the brains behind the bombs find it easier to evade detection, but their capture could spark a furious public response, dramatically heightening the potential for ethnic unrest in Britain. Nevertheless, it is a fact that thousands of young Muslim men have been radicalised in Britain and dozens — possibly hundreds — are known to have travelled abroad to receive military training at camps in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bosnia. Encouraged by radical clerics such as the London-based Omar Bakri Mohammed (who claims to have sent more than 700 people abroad for training), recruits learn how to handle arms, explosives and toxins. Other jihadi groups active in Britain include supporters of Kashmiri independence such as Jaish-e-Mohammed. The Tamil Tigers and various Palestinian organisations, among them Hamas and Hezbollah, are also known to have supporters here. Until recently there was no firm evidence that British-born Muslims were planning attacks at home, although many have become involved in violent activity abroad. Then last year two separate groups of young men (of Pakistani origin) were seized who appear to have been in the process of preparing bombs for use in Britain. AL-QAEDA ACOLYTES After the 9/11 attacks on America and the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan, Al Qaeda's ability to direct terrorist actions has been massively disrupted. However, this has not prevented Osama Bin Laden or Ayman Al Zawahiri, his lieutenant, from inciting others to continue the jihad against Western targets. Numerous groups inspired by Bin Laden, but with little direct contact, have grown rapidly in the past few years, fuelled by adoration of Bin Laden and anger at the war in Iraq. They include the Algerian Salafist Group for Call and Combat, the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group and the Iraq-based Ansar ul-Islam. The devastating bombings in Bali, Casablanca, Istanbul and Madrid are all believed to have been carried out by autonomous terrorist cells inspired by and affiliated to the wider Al Qaeda network. Such a group, living under cover in Europe as political refugees or migrant workers, could possibly have carried out the London bombings. Initial information suggests that Thursday's operation was planned by dedicated extremists. The bomb makers used sophisticated high explosives, which are hard to obtain in Britain, suggesting a link to a wider network. THE MAIN MAN? A key suspect is Mustafa Setmarian Nasar — a Syrian suspected of being Al Qaeda's operations chief in Europe and the alleged mastermind of last year's Madrid railway bombings. Both the United States and Britain are currently seeking Nasar. |
This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/800