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2-5-2003 Scotsman Friends shock at British suicide bombers By Gethin Chamberlain HE WAS a devout Muslim, prayed five times a day, had travelled to Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia among other countries, and handed out leaflets at his local mosque. But if there was one thing everyone connected with Asif Mohammed Hanif agreed on yesterday, it was that there was nothing about him to suggest he would turn out to be a suicide bomber. He was a nice young man who sometimes popped into his neighbours' houses, they said. He was a "teddy bear" of a person. He was a loner. He was not the sort of person who would blow up himself or anyone else. At the family home in Hounslow, west London, they were clinging to the hope that the man who killed himself and three others at Mike's Place, in Tel Aviv, on Tuesday was not Hanif, but someone who had stolen his passport. In Omar Khan Sharif's home city of Derby, there was similar disbelief and fascination about the man said by the Israelis to be on the run after failing to detonate a second bomb. He was the father of two children, had attended a private school, and his father was a wealthy and respected man who had opened the city's first kebab shop. A local councillor articulated what they all felt - people from Derby didn't do that sort of thing. While police in Israel and the UK continued their inquiries into the backgrounds of the two men, in Hounslow, the blinds were drawn at the Hanif residence. Outside, neighbours were painting a picture of a polite but intensely religious young man. Tanveer, who declined to give his last name, said he had known Hanif, 21, since they were at school together, adding that Hanif had developed his interest in religion after leaving school, travelling to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. But he found it hard to believe that his friend could have been responsible for the bombing. He suggested that his passport might have been stolen by someone to get money to buy drugs. He had heard that Hanif was being held by the Israeli police for not having a passport. He said: "He was very clever but there's a difference between being religious and being a fundamentalist. He prayed five times a day but he must have been influenced by someone." Hanif had three brothers - two older and one younger - and a 14-year-old sister. One brother, Taz, said Hanif, who spoke Urdu and English, had been studying Arabic at Damascus University, in Syria, so that he could return to England and teach in London. He could not believe his brother could be responsible. "He wasn't that sort of person. He wasn't into that kind of stuff," he said. "We used to watch the news and our parents said the suicide stuff is not good. What do you achieve by killing yourself and killing other people?. "I spoke to him two weeks ago and he said he was all right and still at university. Anyone who knew him would tell you. He was just a big teddy bear." At Cranford Community College, Hanif's old school, they were as mystified as everyone else. The headteacher, Kevin Prunty, said Hanif did well in business studies and was a "well-liked and respected pupil". The only indication of any growing militancy was a sighting of the student at his local mosque in Hounslow, handing out leaflets espousing the Palestinian cause. Mohammed Hashmi, who led the Hounslow Jamia Mosque for 12 years, said he only remembered Hanif as a polite and honourable young man. But he did not approve of the handling out of leaflets outside the mosque, or of suicide attacks. It was much the same story in Derby. Sharif, 27, was polite and devoted to his faith, but no-one thought of him as a radical. Privately educated and the son of a successful businessman, he was married with two children and lived in the predominantly Muslim suburb of Normanton, where he was seen just days before the attack in Tel Aviv. One of six children, Sharif was known as a polite child and studied for two years at Repton Preparatory School, in Milton, south Derbyshire . A neighbour, Waseem Raza, said: "Omar was always very devoted to his faith but, when he was younger, no-one thought of him as a radical or an extremist." Mr Raza said that when Sharif returned to Derby after studying for a degree in London, he appeared to have undergone changes in his religious outlook. He had also met his wife, a woman of Middle Eastern extraction. "I still used to see him because he only lived round the corner and, recently, it seemed he was becoming more religious than usual. Even then, I didn't think he was a fundamentalist. " The Muslim Council of Britain condemned the bombings, but an extremist Muslim cleric, Sheikh Omar Bakri, the al-Muhajiroun leader, refused to do so. The bombing was claimed as a joint operation by the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, and the armed wing of Hamas, the hardline Islamic group.
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................................................................................................................. Copyright ©2004 Gethin Chamberlain. All rights reserved. |
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