The former wife of a British Islamist extremist said on Monday that her husband had suggested she carry out a suicide bombing against the UK.
Speaking exclusively to the BBC’s ‘Newsnight’ programme, the woman said her husband had instructed her on how to strap an explosive belt around her body. She also said that she had been warned that “something big” would happen about three weeks before the 2005 London bombings.
The woman, whose identity is being kept anonymous by the BBC for security reasons, said her husband was a threat to the UK and had been completely “brainwashed”. She said her husband is known to have fallen in with UK extremists sympathetic to the aims of Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda.
During the interview, the woman told Newsnight’s Richard Watson that her husband and his fellow extremists would talk about what they believed to be their duty to follow a course of “jihad” in this case referring to attacks against perceived enemies of Muslims. “He used to say we should all follow jihad, giving an example of a female suicide bomber in India who had given her life for jihad,” she said in the interview. “My husband told me I should join him and participate in jihad as well.”
The woman told Watson that her husband had attempted to instruct her in ways to turn herself into a suicide bomber by concealing explosives under baggy, traditional Islamic clothing. “He would tell me how to use a [bomb] belt around the waist,” she said. “Whenever he would discuss these matters I would just ignore him and go to the kitchen.” |