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UK plotter linked to Tel Aviv blasts
 THE suspected ringleader of the July 7 attacks in London last year was linked to two other British suicide bombers, one of whom blew himself up outside an Israeli bar in 2003, The Sunday Times has reported. The newspaper quoted Kursheed Fiaz, a businessman who runs an information technology company in Manchester, northwest England, as saying he had four or five meetings with Mohammed Sidique Khan from 2001. He said Khan was initially accompanied by Omar Khan Sharif and later by Asif Mohammed Hanif and the men wanted to indoctrinate young Muslims and take them to Pakistan, Syria and Afghanistan for training. Hanif, 21, blew himself up and killed three other people at a busy seafront pub in Tel Aviv in 2003. The body of Sharif, 27, was later found in the sea. He is believed to have fled after failing to set off his own device.
| Whereupon Hamas bumped him off. Failure wasn't an option. |
Fiaz's account features in a BBC television programme "Britain's First Suicide Bombers" to be broacast on Tuesday, according to The Sunday Times, which said he had not been interviewed by police. In the programme, Fiaz, 46, is said to recount how Khan came to his office seeking to spread "Dawa", a form of evangelical preaching of Islam. Khan, who had secured a position as a primary school teaching assistant in his home town of Leeds, northern England, reportedly asked whether any of Fiaz's staff wanted to learn about Islam. "We need to teach them certain things," Khan is alleged to have said, without elaborating.
"What sort of things?"
"Certain things." |
Fiaz reportedly told the programme that his nephews and some other young men who took up the offer became suspicious when Khan and his friends talked about taking them abroad "to enhance the training".
"Really, you gotta see Pakistan. It's an Islamic wonderland!"
"They got training camps there?"
"No, no! Certainly not!" |
"We got the impression they were looking for some gullible people. Youngsters... that would fall for whatever they were trying to preach or practise," he was quoted as saying.
| "So, tell me: You got anybody stupid working here?" |
The Sunday Times said Fiaz's account raises questions not only about the links between the three men, who all left video messages justifying their actions, but whether Khan was a co-conspirator in the Tel Aviv bombing.
| Ummm... Lemme think. Yes. |
It cited confirmation from Israeli police that he visited the country briefly two months before the attack. Fiaz said he did not contact police after the Tel Aviv bombings because both Sharif and Hanif were dead while he did not link Khan to them until after the July 7 attacks.
Posted by: tipper 2006-07-09 |
