Lives of the London Bombers

[Timber Loftis]

July 14, 2005
Lives of Three Men Offer Little to Explain Attacks
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ

LEEDS, England, July 13 - In the gritty, working-class suburbs of Leeds, Shahzad Tanweer, 22, was the fun-loving, rich kid of the neighborhood, the son of a savvy, Mercedes-driving shop owner.

Hasib Hussain, 18, who lived nearby, was the impressionable one, a charming young man who had been drifting into a reckless teenage life until religion set him straight.

And Mohamed Sadique Khan, 30, was the grown-up one, with a wife and a baby daughter at home. The three men used to work out together at the Hardy Street mosque in Beeston, the Leeds neighborhood that two of the suspects called home.

As the identities of these suicide bombing suspects slowly emerged Wednesday behind a thicket of disbelief, the question that nobody in these neighborhoods could answer was this: What kind of radical force threw the three men together, with another bomber, to commit such a heinous crime against their country, the one they rooted for in soccer matches, and their people?

"It still hasn't sunk in yet that these people could have perpetrated something like this and actually came from our community," said Hanif Malik, spokesman for the Hamara Community Services Center in Beeston. "The tensions in this town are not based on religion, but on economics and culture."

Bradford, a community nearby, had riots a few years ago, as did Leeds, though on a smaller scale, and tensions between whites and South Asians often run high in the Holbeck and Beeston neighborhoods, home to many of Leeds' Muslims, residents said.

Many local businesses are owned by people of South Asian origin, a source of resentment among many whites. Last year a white teenage boy was stabbed to death by a group of South Asian teenagers, and the hard feelings have deepened since then.

Some whites make no attempts to hide their disaffection, and say relations are only likely to worsen. "Make them all go back," said David Swaine, 23, of Beeston.

In many ways, the two youngest suicide bombing suspects, Mr. Tanweer, 22, and Mr. Hussain, 18, were British to the core, shaped by their diverse, rough neighborhoods, where flashy cars, petty teenage battles and designer clothes jostle with the Muslim values of work, family and religion. But in the last year or two, friends said, they had noted a turn toward Muslim piety in each man; nothing shocking or obnoxious, just something plain to see.

Mr. Tanweer, a university-educated cricket fanatic who also excelled in soccer and whose father ran a successful fish and chips shop, had taken to praying five times a day, something his relatives did not do, and attending a number of mosques regularly, acquaintances said. He even went to Pakistan last year to visit relatives and study religion, and some media reports said he visited Afghanistan on the same trip.

"He went to Pakistan," said a friend who works for a local greengrocer in Beeston and asked that his name not be used for fear of reprisals. "But a lot of people go to Pakistan. So? The lads used to tease him that he was going there to get married. I think he went for six weeks or something."

Forensic evidence indicates Mr. Tanweer was on the subway train at Aldgate.

"The family is shattered," said Bashir Ahmed, 65, Mr. Tanweer's uncle, who walked toward Mr. Tanweer's house, which was roped off by police tape. Mr. Tanweer "loved his country," he said. "He loved this community. I thought his only interest was cricket. He was not especially religious. Our family does not have a future in this community now."

Mr. Hussain, an average student who graduated from Matthew Murray Vocational School in 2003 and was attending Thomas Danby College, the equivalent of the last two years of high school. He had also begun to shake off Western habits, even more abruptly than his friend Mr. Tanweer. A tall, shy teenager, Mr. Hussain, who lived in Holbeck, had taken up with a rough Pakistani crowd in his high school years, the kind of young people who brawled with white kids over girls and perceived slights. Classmates said he was relatively docile, until provoked, then he could become violent.

Then, about 18 months ago, he went on the hajj to Saudi Arabia, neighbors said, and returned a changed person, less aggressive and keenly interested in religion. He began going to the mosque. Sometimes, he even wore flowing baggy Pakistani pants and shirt. He, too, went to Pakistan, the BBC reported. The adults around him, who had been concerned that he was veering out of control, seemed pleased at the change, neighbors said.

He told his family he was going to London with friends for a few days, but on Thursday evening, when he failed to return home, his mother called the police to report that he was missing. The phone call would help police break open the case.

Mr. Hussain's driver's license and bank cash cards were found in the wreckage of the double-decker bus.

A few miles away, in Dewsbury, a more kempt suburb of Leeds, Mr. Khan, 30, the man suspected of blowing up the bomb at the Edgware Road subway station, moved recently into a small terrace house with his wife and daughter.

By day, Mr. Khan, who was born in Pakistan but reared in Leeds, worked with disabled students at a center or a school, neighbors said. He was not particularly devout, and few neighbors said they could remember seeing him at the mosque. In fact, neighbors said he married without even telling his family. His parents found out after the fact, they told reporters..

His mother-in-law, Farida Patel, is a teacher and a prominent community worker whose father campaigned against apartheid in South Africa, a local official, Khizar Iqbal, said.

Forensic evidence ties Mr. Khan to the bombing near Edgware Station.

In some ways, the men, particularly the youngest ones, fit neatly into the stereotype of a suicide bomber: They are the right age. They grew up in neighborhoods where no jobs, or bad jobs, are just as common as steady jobs. They lived on blocks where people from all over the world - from Pakistan to Kosovo, Jamaica to Uganda - do not so much live together as collide with one another or, at best, keep a separate peace.

Small-time drug dealing and drug use have increased in Beeston, residents say.

But the men, particularly Mr. Tanweer, are also sharply at odds with common notions about the profile of a suicide bomber. While not rich, his family is certainly not destitute. Mr. Tanweer's father, a successful local businessman who moved to Britain in the 1960's, is an immigrant success story.

Mr. Tanweer lived in a large house and drove his father's red Mercedes on occasion. He wore brand-name clothes, worked out at a gym and took classes in the martial arts. He studied sports science at Leeds Metropolitan University, and when he could, he worked at his father's fish and chips shop for extra money.

Everyone who knew him described him as infinitely likable. Terrorism seemed the farthest thing from his mind, his friends said. "He was a good lad, so down-to-earth," said a friend who played cricket with him the day before the bombing. Although the neighborhood is poor, people of South Asian origin own most of the businesses. There is a sense, at least among these families, that they were moving up the ladder, rather than down it.

Mr. Hussain's father works in a factory. His son finished vocational school. It was clear that the teenage dangers here - gangs, drugs and other troublemaking - posed more of a threat than extremist ideologies.

Many in the neighborhood theorize that the men must have been "brainwashed," as Adrian Healy, a neighbor, put it. "That may sound extreme," he added. "But then so is blowing people up."

Hassan M. Fattah and Jonathan Allen contributed reporting for this article.

[shamrock_uk]

Strange...by all accounts they were upstanding citizens.

The older one is puzzling, if he's not especially religious then what else might his motivation have been?

[Morgeruat]

link

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.

A 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....

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.

[Stratos]

It's unlikely we'll ever know the exact reasoning behind their motive, and even if we will we'll probably wont be able to understand it and relate to it.

Three men got swooned by the words of some mullah or other about warfare against infidels and decided they wanted to be a part of it. That's all I see.

[shamrock_uk]

Originally posted by Morgeruat: 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.

This is perhaps the only encouraging thing in all of this - if radicals have been driven underground then that would surely point to some form of rejection within the mainstream Muslim community.

It does seem that a little more research into who gets government funding might be in order though [img]tongue.gif[/img]

[Charlie]

Originally posted by shamrock_uk: Strange...by all accounts they were upstanding citizens.

They were pretending/purporting to be upstanding citizens, they were infact lower and worse than anything you could scrape from the bottom of your shoe. They and their "religious order" knew that from the off. Alternatively they may have been bereft of a single cell of intelligence and humanity from the start, but, "by all accounts they were upstanding citizens" so one must assume they were calculating, if easily led bastards.

Incidentally, the UK prison system is a major recruiting ground for converting Muslims, not necessarily terrorists. Dunno why that should be, maybe a solidarity thing.

My biggest regrets...

(A)These pieces of crap mixed their unholy tainted blood with that of the innocent.

(B)They didn't feel a thing.

[Felix The Assassin]

The enemy is deceiving. He blends well. He will not stand out amongst a crowd. He will not attract attention to himself. He will befriend you, and kill you in the same life time.

Situational awareness: The art ok KNOWING what's going on around you! Live by it, or?

[Stratos]

Well, it's appearant they take advantage of the Western worlds values of a free and open society to strike at us.

[Morgeruat]

Originally posted by Charlie: Incidentally, the UK prison system is a major recruiting ground for converting Muslims, not necessarily terrorists. Dunno why that should be, maybe a solidarity thing.

Not a phenomenon unique to UK, it's also very prevalent in the US.

[shamrock_uk]

I guess if there's one danger sign to all this is that there must be a certain je ne sais quois to being British.

They've fulfilled all the visible requirements of integrating (especially relevent given we would usually say non-integration is the problem) yet still are not loyal to Britain.

Time to rethink a multicultural society?

[ 07-19-2005, 07:37 PM: Message edited by: shamrock_uk ]