The sister of the first British suicide bomber recruited by Hamas actively encouraged her brother, sending him an e-mail in case his resolve faltered at the last minute, an Old Bailey jury was told yesterday. Omar Sharif, 27, and his 21-year-old friend, Asil Hanif, both British Muslims, slipped into Israel posing as tourists in April last year and checked into a hostel in Tel Aviv. In their room they shaved their bodies "because martyrs want to be clean when they enter paradise", assembled the bombs, strapped them to their torsos and hid them under their clothes. But before Sharif set out for a busy waterfront area he received an e-mail from his sister Parveen, 36. It urged him: "We all have to be firm and focused with reality as time is slipping away, and there is really no time to be weak and emotional. Stay focused and determined."
Sharif and Hanif set out with their bombs and waited until the area got busier and there were more potential victims to kill and maim. Hanif detonated his bomb outside Mike’s Place, a popular bar, killing himself, three others and injuring 65. Sharif’s bomb failed to go off and he fled, dumping it nearby. Twelve days later his body was found in the sea off the Israeli coast. "The circumstances of his death are not clear, although the post mortem findings are consistent with drowning," said Jonathan Laidlaw, prosecuting. Parveen Sharif, a supply teacher, pleaded not guilty to inciting Omar Sharif to commit an act of terrorism and failing to disclose information about terrorism. |