London: Our Son was Brainwashed to do This Evil

Family in Plea to Find Terror Network

Sunday Mail, UK/July 17, 2005
By Lynn Mcpherson

The family of one of the London bombers yesterday said a terror network had brainwashed their son.

Mohammad Sidique Khan, 30, killed seven people in the Edgware Road blast.

His devastated family last night expressed their 'deepest and heartfelt sympathies' to the victims' families and the injured.

They urged the public to 'expose the terror networks which target and groom our sons to carry out such evils'.

In a statement through the police, they said Khan must have been brainwashed.

Khan, 30, was the oldest of the four bombers and is suspected of passing his radical views to the others.

He was regarded as a respectable family man by neighbours near the council house in Dewsbury he shared with his wife, Hasina Patel, and his 14-month-old daughter.

Khan taught vulnerable children at Hillside Primary, at Beeston, Leeds.

He and two of the other bombers - Shehzad Tanweer, 22, and Hasib Hussain, 18 - had been banned from at least three mosques in the area because of their radical views.

Khan toured Westminster last year with school children, on the invitation of MP Jon Trickett.

The wife of fourth bomber Germaine Lindsay has also expressed her disbelief that he could have caused the 26 deaths at King's Cross.

The Jamaican's eight-months pregnant wife Samantha Lewthwaite, 22, insists he would never have killed himself.

Mum-of-one Samantha, of Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, met fanatical Lindsay after converting to Islam. She said: 'I won't believe it until there's DNA proof. He was lovely - and we were just perfect together.'

The family of Hussain said they had no idea he could have been involved.

His mother's description of her son's missing clothes led police to conclude that he was the likely attacker in the bus bombing that killed 14. His family said their thoughts were with those who lost loved ones and added: 'Hasib was a loving and normal young man who gave us no concern. We have difficulty taking this in.'

M15 are investigating the theory that the bombers were duped into killing themselves after it emerged they had all bought return rail tickets and pay-and-display parking tickets for their cars. And as the bombs were detonated, none of them was heard to cry 'Allah Akhbar' - 'God is Great' - often yelled by suicide bombers.

One line of investigation is that the men had been told by an al-Qaeda controller that they had a few minutes to escape after setting off timers to detonate the bombs.

Instead, the bombs exploded immediately, killing all four, and ending any chance they could pass on information