← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Gregz
Thread ID: 19134 | Posts: 5 | Started: 2005-07-13
2005-07-13 17:10 | User Profile
Together Shehzad Tanweer, 22, Hasib Hussain, 19, and Mohammed Sadique Khan, 30, have emerged as Britain's worst nightmare: the suburban suicide bombers.
Minutes before their murderous rampage, chilling images of the three ââ¬â and a fourth, as yet unnamed, Luton man ââ¬â show them chatting and smiling as they walked through the concourse of London's King's Cross station.
One security chief said they looked relaxed.
"They had large rucksacks on their backs and looked like they were going for a hike," he said.
Another, perhaps with the benefit of hindsight, cast a more sinister eye on the tape. They looked, he said, [I]"like infantry going off to war".[/I]
Their day began before dawn when they set off from Leeds in a Honda Accord hire car to drive 360km to Luton.
Police believe the trio met up with a fourth, as yet unknown, man at the station car park about 7am.
They paid for a parking ticket, which will now be tested for DNA. From there, they caught a commuter service to King's Cross, paid for their Underground tickets and split up. Twenty minutes later, at 8.50am, three of the bombs were detonated by their carriers. The fourth, on the No. 30 bus, went off almost an hour later.
To those who knew them, however, suggestions they are behind the July 7 atrocity seem preposterous. "No one can believe Shehzad could have got mixed up in something like this," friend Mohammed Afzal said.
"He was just a normal boy who didn't show any interest in extremism."
What he did seem fanatical about was his cricket, teammate Mohammed Anwar said. "I played cricket with him last week," he said. "It's not in his nature to do something like this. He is the type [who] would condemn things like that."
Such testimony makes disturbing reading for those charged with protecting ordinary Britons from terrorism. The new enemy looks and behaves like ordinary members of the community. He has no criminal past, no overt links to fanaticism.
If the terrorists' own friends have no inkling, how is it possible to stop them?Suspicion, distrust and paranoia descended like a blanket over the Leeds suburbs of Beeston, Holbeck and Dewsbury last night.
"This is just a normal community where people do normal things," said one of the residents of Colwyn Rd, Beeston ââ¬â site of one of the raids. If Tanweer, Hussain and Khan were capable of mass murder, who else might be?
However, the question playing on everyone's lips was simply, "Why?"
Leeds-born Hussain, 19, had taken to wearing robes two years ago, but his family had never suspected his interest had a sinister edge.
The night before he blew himself up, Tanweer played cricket in a local park until it got dark. He had a sports science degree and, at 22, seemingly his whole life ahead of him. Khan was newly married with a nine-month-old baby. Despite these facades, all three had cultivated a deep hatred of their homeland.
The payoff, according to the propaganda of Osama bin Laden, is eternal life in Jannah, the gardens of Paradise. As blessed martyrs, they would be rewarded with 72 dark-eyed virgins attending to their every whim.
2005-07-13 17:17 | User Profile
Bomb suspects 'had been arrested before'
Some of the suspected suicide bombers who attacked London last week had been arrested in 2004 but freed in a bid to catch a wider network, French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy has claimed.
[U]"It seems that part of this team had been subject to partial arrest... in Spring 2004,"[/U] Sarkozy told a news conference, reportedly quoting what British Home Secretary Charles Clarke had told an emergency meeting of EU justice and home affairs ministers.
But Mr Clarke has strenuously denied the claims.
"This is completely and utterly untrue," he said.
"I've not even talked to Mr Sarkosy about this matter. I find it amazing. I simply don't understand where he's said that from. He's simply wrong in that assertion."
Sarkozy also added that there was a strong suspicion the explosives used in the bombings on came from the Balkans or eastern Europe. Mr Clarke refused to comment on this assertion, saying that it was a matter for the police.
Mastermind
Meanwhile in London the search continued for the mastermind behind the bombs.
Detectives were piecing together the lives of Britain's first suicide bombers - four home-grown young men who brought carnage to London.
And they were hunting the plotters and the planners who sent them to their deaths, amid fears there may be more volunteers ready to die for their cause.
There was shock and disbelief in West Yorkshire today at the news that three of the bombers came from the county.
Details of the identities of the men, one of whom was still a teenager, began to emerge after a series of dramatic raids on homes in the Leeds area yesterday.
2005-07-13 17:28 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Gregz]Together Shehzad Tanweer, 22, Hasib Hussain, 19, and Mohammed Sadique Khan, 30, have emerged as Britain's worst nightmare: the suburban suicide bombers.[/QUOTE] Ah ha! Thank you, Gregz, for stating the names of the suspects. I watched almost half an hour of 'news' this morning on Fox and CNN, and they did not mention the suspects' names once. However, they must have used the phrases 'British nationals', 'natives', 'from Leeds', and 'homegrown terrorists' at least 40 times during that same period. Coupled with the obvious reluctance to publicize the names, this had made me virtually certain that the suspects were immigrants, probably Pakis. Thank you for confirming my suspicions.
2005-07-13 17:28 | User Profile
Why is it always the young dumb ones that are willing to blow themselves up for the "cause". You don't see the old guys doing it? Or is this why we can't find Osama?
2005-07-13 21:16 | User Profile
[QUOTE=BlueBonnet]Why is it always the young dumb ones that are willing to blow themselves up for the "cause". You don't see the old guys doing it? Or is this why we can't find Osama?[/QUOTE]
Maybe its the 40 perpetual virgins that they get to bang in paradise after death. Thats heaven if you have to look at burkas all day.