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Mohammad Siddique Khan

Mohammad Siddique Khan

al-Qaeda

India-Pakistan

20060512

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Britain

7/7 bomber's farewell video shown

2008-04-25

A home video of London suicide bomber Mohammad Siddique Khan bidding goodbye to his baby daughter has been shown to a jury at Kingston Crown Court. The video was shown in the prosecution of three men alleged to have helped find bombing targets in the capital. Waheed Ali, Sadeer Saleem and Mohammed Shakil deny helping the bombers months before the attacks on 7 July 2005. In the November 2004 video, Siddique Khan tells his daughter that he "has to do this thing for our future". The jury at Kingston Crown Court was told that in late 2004 Siddique Khan and fellow suicide bomber Shehzad Tanweer flew to Pakistan. Prosecutors say that the leader of the bombers expected to die fighting jihad - but there was an unexpected change of plan while abroad which led to their return and the London bombings the following summer. In the weeks before their departure, Siddique Khan recorded a number of home videos featuring his six-month-old daughter. Neil Flewitt QC, prosecuting, said the videos included a lot of "cooing over the baby" typical of any doting parents. In one, shot two days before the departure, Siddique Khan can be seen cradling his baby daughter in his arms. She is wearing a baby-suit and is jiggling on his knee. The bomber is slightly off-camera for most of the recording as the lens is focused on the girl. His voice can be heard clearly and he frequently breaks off from speaking to kiss her. He is heard saying: "Sweetheart, not long to go now and I'm going to really, really miss you a lot. I'm thinking about it already. "Look, I absolutely love you to bits and you have been the happiest thing in my life. You and your mum, absolutely brilliant. I don't know what else to say. I just wish I could have been part of your life, especially these growing up... these next months, they're really special with you learning to walk and things. "I just so much wanted to be with you but I have to do this for our future and it will be for the best, Inshallah [God willing] in the long run. "That's the most important thing. You make plenty of dua [prayers] for you guys and you've got loads of people to look after you and keep an eye on you. But most importantly I entrust you to Allah and let Allah take care of you. And I'm doing what I'm doing for the sake of Islam, not, you know, it's not for materialistic or worldly benefits." Mr Flewitt told the jury the video had come to light shortly after the bombings. Hasina Patel, Siddique Khan's widow, had handed some tapes to a friend in late 2004. At 1845 on 8 July, the day after the bombings, she handed more material to the same friend. On 13 July the friend handed them over to the police. 'Uncles' video In another video, recorded in October 2004, Khan introduces his daughter to "her uncles", Waheed Ali and 7 July bombers Shehzad Tanweer and Hasib Hussain. The men are relaxing in the lounge at a house with a television on in the background. Siddique Khan calls Tanweer Uncle "Kaki". Mr Ali, sitting on the floor next to Hussain, gets up and kisses his own bicep in a jokey manner. The jury were told of further footage to be played later which includes Hasina Patel. Mr Flewitt told the court that Ms Patel says: "There are two minutes left so say your piece." Khan is said to reply: "My little sweetheart I love you lots and lots. You are my little baby with big fat little feet. Remember me in your Duas, I will certainly remember you, and, inshallah, things will work out for the best. Look after your mother, she needs looking after. Be strong, learn to fight - fighting is good. Be mummy's best friend. Take care of mummy - you can both do things together like fighting and stuff."

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India-Pakistan

ISI warned UK about 7/7 bomber

2007-05-02

Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) twice warned British intelligence about the terrorist threat from a group of British men – one of whom would later take part in the 7/7 suicide bombings of London’s transport network – living in Lahore in 2003, The Times reports. “There is no question that 7/7 could have and should have been stopped. British agencies did not follow some of the information we gave to them,” a high-ranking ISI official told The Times. This information related to a group of British men who took rooms in Sufi House, No 13 Ilyas Street, Lahore, in the summer of 2003. Says The Times report: “These young men were no ordinary students. They had come to Pakistan to study violent jihad.” Among those staying at Sufi House that summer were Omar Khyam, and Mohammad Siddique Khan from Yorkshire, who would on July 7, 2005, lead Britain’s first suicide bomb cell, which killed 52 people in London. The Times learnt that Khan gave immigration officers the telephone number of the Sufi House as his contact point on arrival in Pakistan that summer. “The mass murder may have been prevented had intelligence agencies picked up on the trail of clues and connections that identified Khan as a terrorist in the making,” says The Times. Khyam was later arrested and tried for plotting a bombing campaign in Britain. He and four others were convicted and sentenced to 35-40 years in prison on Monday. Khan and Khyam had attended terrorist camps before they met at Islamabad airport in July 2003, on their way to the same jihad training expedition. In Ilyas Street the neighbours also had their suspicions, and called police after hearing a series of late-night explosions. One woman said: “We knew what they were doing and we were afraid at those boys being here, but we couldn’t do anything about it.” The group told police that a propane gas cylinder had exploded. The officers alerted their superiors, who ordered a surveillance operation. The authorities became aware that the group had travelled to the mountainous Malakand region, “where Al Qaeda maintains training camps and compounds,” says The Times. Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, the Al Qaeda commander who was transferred to Guantanamo Bay last week, directed their training and attack planning. Intelligence sources in Pakistan told the newspaper that the group was taught how to manufacture and detonate homemade explosives using ammonium nitrate and aluminium powder. In Lahore members of the group were observed making regular visits to the Gohar Centre, an office complex where the extremist group al-Muhajiroun rented space. Pakistani intelligence sources told The Times that they reported their concerns to British agencies because they were satisfied that the group was not a threat to Pakistan but was intent on carrying out attacks back in Britain. The report says Khan returned to Britain in August 2003, and after that police missed several clues as to his future intentions as they carried out a surveillance operation of Khyam and his gang.

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India-Pakistan

In Pakistan, signs of Al Qaeda all around

2006-09-07

Pakistan appears to have replaced Afghanistan as Al Qaeda’s “centre of gravity”, according to a report by CNN. Picked right up on that, didn't they? Al Qaeda’s production company, As Sahab, does much of its work in Pakistan, the report says, and the latest Al Qaeda video was probably uploaded in one of the thousands of Internet cafes in Pakistan. “Waziristan is one of the places where Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri are thought to have hidden out and where As Sahab produces its work,” says CNN. Their latest video featured a message from American Adam Gadahn calling on his countrymen to convert to Islam. Gadahn's another of those misunderstood California boyz. When he's caught, Mom and Pop will no doubt plead that he be released, since he's suffered enough... Whether this was Al Qaeda’s fifth-anniversary message after 9/11 wasn’t clear, but the video had been anticipated since a flashing graphic had advertised it on Islamist websites two days earlier. As Sahab had struck again, showing how easily and effectively Al Qaeda was in getting its message out. What's hard about posting messages on the internet? Did we miss something here? Al-Zawahiri was on the tape, but Gadahn was the star of the show. The 28-year-old bearded and chubby-cheeked Californian prefers to use his alias, Azzam the American. It's scarier. Gadahn grew up in Riverside County, California, on a goat farm. His father was a rock guitarist before starting the farm with his wife. Whoa! Heavy, dude! I suppose the goat farming's good training for becoming a Muslim, though... Gadahn left when he was a teenager, according to his father. After a heavy metal phase, he turned to Islam in 1995 and wrote about it on the Internet. “As I began reading English translations of the Quran, I became more and more convinced of the truth and authenticity of Allah’s teachings contained in those 114 chapters.” "And those goats just kept looking better and better!" Gadahn’s call on Americans to convert came with an explicit warning of what would happen if his call went unheeded. “Anyone who pays any attention to the messages of the leaders of the jihad, like Sheikh Osama bin Laden and Sheikh Ayman al-Zawahiri, may God protect them, will know that they have been consistent in inviting the Americans and other unbelievers to Islam and in pressing upon them that they want the best for them. And making it clear to all that we have no choice but to fight those who fight us,” Gadahn said. There's the difference between Muslims and the rest of us. It's the only religion whose adherents claim a right to kill anyone who doesn't agree with them... Gadahn’s family had no comment about the latest tape. In the past, his father has said Gadahn moved to Pakistan in 1998 and that the family lost touch with him in 2002. We're sure he's a good boy, though, and that he's suffered enough. The report says As Sahab also produced the “martyrdom video” of Shehzad Tanweer, one of the London subway bombers. “What the tape made clear was that when Tanweer and Mohammad Siddique Khan came to Pakistan in late 2004 (both were the children of Pakistani immigrants in Britain), they had been given training and direction from Al Qaeda to carry out their plot,” says the report. That'd be courtesy of Lashkar-e-Taiba... The report’s authors also visited Punjab’s Chak 477, Tanweer’s family village. “Chak 477 has just a few houses and a mosque with mostly dirt roads that quickly give way to lush farmland Outside the mosque, we try to find out how the villagers feel about Tanweer. “One man kept telling us that Tanweer’s acts had brought trouble to the village because it meant that journalists kept coming to ask questions. But he wouldn’t be pinned down on whether he condemned Tanweer’s actions. He didn't. “Another man in the crowd kept asking him, in Urdu, why he was even talking with us. Inside the mosque, after news of Tanweer’s death reached the village last summer, prayers were said for him in something resembling a memorial. When we knocked on the door of the Tanweer family home, one of the biggest in town, a woman answered. Her voice was full of anger as she asked when she would get her son back. This wasn’t the bomber’s mother but an older relative who did not believe that Tanweer had been the suicide bomber. After a few more words, she shut the door. As we drove out of town, we stopped at the village cemetery. The largest marker was for Tanweer. At the gravestone’s bottom was inscribed the date of his death, when he blew himself up on a London subway. It was a reminder of the troubling connection between Pakistan and Al Qaeda.”

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Britain

London bombers linked to Qaeda: UK

2006-05-12

Two of the suicide bombers behind last year’s deadly London transport attacks likely had contacts with Al Qaeda, but British security lacked resources to stop the atrocity, said an official report on Thursday. The report, by an influential parliamentary committee, cleared intelligence services of any culpable failings in preventing the four bombers carrying out Britain’s worst terror attack, which killed them and 52 other people. In the first full account of the events before and after the July 7 blasts, the document said Mohammad Siddique Khan (30) and Shehzad Tanweer (22) had appeared only vaguely on Britain’s intelligence radar. They were considered peripheral figures at the time and were not pursued, with agents pre-occupied with “more pressing priorities”, the report found. Afterwards, it emerged they had been to Pakistan. Khan visited in 2003 and again, this time with Tanweer, between November 2004 and February 2005. “It has not yet been established who they met in Pakistan, but it is assessed as likely that they had some contact with Al Qaeda figures,” the 44-page report by the Intelligence and Security Committee said. The two men, whose identities were only established after July 7, probably received “operational training” there, it added. Nevertheless, the committee’s chairman Paul Murphy said the intelligence services were not to blame. “There was no evidence that these two men were involved in attack planning against this country,” he told a press conference. “There was no culpable evidence of failure on the part of the agencies. Our view is that it was understandable that the leads were not taken any further. Things may have been different - but they may not have been.” He denied criticism that the report amounted to a whitewash.

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India-Pakistan

Phone calls from Pakistan may reveal Khan's Qaeda contacts

2006-05-12

Investigators are focusing on almost 200 phone calls made from Pakistan to Mohammad Siddique Khan in a bid to uncover his links to Qaeda, said officials on Thursday. One of the bombers may have also travelled to Waziristan, they added. British Home Secretary John Reid said Khan and Shahzad Tanweer are "likely to have met Qaeda figures" during their visit to Pakistan. Why else make the trip? To visit the old family homestead? To marry Cousin Lulu? Later, Brigadier Javed Cheema, head of the national crisis management cell, said, "We have seen the British report and Khan and Tanweer, were from Pakistani parentage but second generation British-born, bred and educated in England." There is no denying the fact that these terrorists visited Pakistan but their association with militant organisations here has not been established, he added. I think, since they did explode, that I'd start from the premise that they did, and try to put together an itinerary to either prove or disprove it. If they came back to marry Cousin Lulu and their little Islamic hearts were broken, causing them to go back to Britain and explode, so be it. If they spent the time chatting with bearded holy men in Muzzafargahr, then so be it. My guess leans much more toward the bearded holy men, probably affiliated with Hafiz Saeed. The Brits allowed Tanweer's remains to go home to Pakistan for burial. I hope they took notes on who attended.

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Arabia

Al-Jazeera may have more footage of the 7/7 boomers

2005-09-04

Al Qaeda is reported to have more home-made film from the July 7 bombers. The additional footage is believed to include the gang’s leader, Mohammad Siddique Khan, directly confessing to the attacks on London which killed 56 people. Another of the cell, Shehzad Tanweer is also said to appear, according to a source involved in obtaining the film for Al Jazeera. Police and intelligence experts who were studying the material, have asked the TV station for all the footage they have on Khan and from Al Qaeda’s second in command, Ayman Al Zawahiri. In his video, Osama bin Laden’s deputy describes the July 7 suicide attacks as “the blessed London raid”. He also accuses Muslim leaders in Britain of taking orders from the Queen, calling them “scholars of beggary” who work “to appease Elizabeth, the head of the Church of England, imitate her and issue fatwas in accordance with her religion”. The concern is that whichever radical group is in possession of the British bombers’ film intends to maximise the propaganda value by releasing more of it over the coming weeks. Ayman Gaballah, the deputy chief news editor at Al-Jazeera, denied claims they have footage by any of the other three London bombers. Scotland Yard knew about the existence of Khan’s video testament before it was publicly known that Al Jazeera had been sent the tape by unidentified militants. Counter-terrorist detectives and intelligence agents are trying to determine where and when it was made. They are also working abroad to uncover whether it was smuggled out of the UK by another member of the cell or electronically transmitted to radical sympathisers who produced the edited version. Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner and Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, have said they believe the attack bears the hallmarks of al-Qaeda but the Khan tape is still not seen as conclusive proof that it was directly ordered by the network’s high command. Detectives believe that the July 7 bombers did have outside help, including from known militants in Pakistan whom Khan and Tanweer met during their three-month visit to the country this year. Forensic experts are “pulling apart” the tape to analyse any background clues but they realise that part of the training for would be suicide bombers is how to disguise where the film was made. Police are also searching for the last testaments of the other two bombers, Hasib Hussain and Jermain Lindsay. On Friday, the video brought condemnation from MPs of all sides, Muslim community leaders, survivors and victims’ relatives. The families of the bombers remained in hiding. Shahid Malik, the Labour MP for Dewsbury, described Khan’s family as “very, very distressed, living in fear”. Young Muslims in in Leeds and Dewsbury acknowledged the four’s guuilt yesterday; many had previously refused to believe that they carried out the bombings. Malik joined worshippers at Friday Prayers at the Hardy Street mosque in Beeston where Khan, 30, the ring’s recruiting sergeant, first met Tanweer, 22, and Hussain, 18. “Now they have heard from the horse’s mouth,” Mr Malik said. “Let’s hope people now snap out of their world of delusion.”

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Britain

Bad guys linked back to Finsbury Park mosque

2005-07-27

THE ethnic mix of the eight London bombers, ranging from young Somalis to Yorkshire-born sons of Pakistani parents and an Anglo-Jamaican convert, has surprised investigators. In Madrid, the team were all of North African origin. For September 11, Osama bin Laden chose almost all Saudis. The suicide bombers in Istanbul, whose targets included the British Consulate, were all ethnic Kurds, from the same city in southeast Turkey. Organisers normally prefer to recruit from the same communities, so that their cells have a common language, a shared cause and can often be drawn from the same neighbourhoods. What distinguishes the British cells of suicide bombers is the striking differences between their family backgrounds, their upbringings and even their pastimes. Detectives have been piecing together these eight lives to determine how their paths crossed. The suspicion is that these fanatics from north and south met at Finsbury Park mosque. Mohammad Siddique Khan, 30, the oldest of the Leeds bombers and the suspected leader of that group, is known to have visited this North London mosque over recent years. Police are investigating claims that a second Leeds bomber also spent time there. The East African-born cell lived not far away in North London, so this was a regular place of worship. Other would-be suicide bombers linked to the mosque include Richard Reid, who tried to blow up a passenger jet in midair, and Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 19th hijacker from the 9/11 attacks. It was also a focal point for European and American converts to Islam, including a number linked to terror cells. While police are still trying to establish where these eight men have travelled and whether they attended madrassas or foreign training camps, the belief is that the first moves to turn them into jihadis probably happened here. Properly known as the North London Central Mosque, the five-storey redbrick building was taken over by a group of Islamist extremists in the mid-1990s. Situated close to Arsenal FC’s Highbury stadium, it subsequently became a centre for radical activity and the commonly associated criminal enterprises of credit card fraud and identity document forgery. These activities have stopped since the mosque has come under new leadership. Not all those attending the mosque, which was built in 1988, were extremists or terrorist sympathisers. Many members of the local Muslim community attended it as their nearest place of worship. But the radical takeover made the mosque an immediate draw for Algerians arriving in London as refugees from bitter conflict in their homeland. Among those genuinely fleeing the massacres in Algeria were members of the GIA and GSPC terrorist groups. For many refugees, Finsbury Park mosque was a place where they could buy forged or stolen passports and identity documents that would enable them to find work. It was also a place where they could buy clothes, which had often been stolen by gangs of shoplifters. Refugees from the conflict in Somalia also gravitated towards this area of North London and the mosque, which was the focal point of its Muslim community. The mosque offered the displaced not only a place to pray but also a place to sleep. Over the years thousands of people are thought to have used the basement as a dormitory. Immigration authorities often wrote to people care of the mosque. Those who made the mosque the centre of their lives became prey for the radical preachers and activists. They held regular prayer groups, study circles and political lectures at which their brand of fundamentalist Islam was preached in violent, uncompromising terms. The Taleban regime in Afghanistan was held up as an example of how to run an Islamic state and money was raised to send people and equipment to Kabul. Youths from the Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities went there, as did a number of black African Muslims and black British converts to Islam.

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Britain

UK may be facing a network of bombmaking factories

2005-07-24

TERRORISTS behind the attempted bomb attacks in London last week may have gone on a whitewater rafting trip with two of the July 7 suicide bombers just weeks before the first attacks. Detectives were last night investigating the possible link between the two terrorist cells after receiving intelligence that suggested the two groups shared the adventure holiday. Mohammad Siddique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer, who blew themselves up on the Edgeware Road and Aldgate Tube trains, rode rapids at Canofan Tryweryn, the National Whitewater Centre in Bala, North Wales just a few weeks before launching their devastating attack. Photographs of the trip showed Khan raising a two-fingered V for Victory sign while Tanweer laughed. Officers now believe that several people connected to addresses they are investigating in relation to last week's attempted bombings may also have been on the trip. Last night police continued to question a pair of suspects who they believe are two of the four bombers who went on the run after Thursday's failed attacks. Both were arrested in the Stockwell area of London on Friday, close to where a third man, Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, was shot dead by police officers as he ran on to a Tube train. Yesterday afternoon, armed police swooped on a flat in the leafy Tulse Hill area of the capital. Frightened residents reported hearing eight gunshots as officers carrying submachine guns entered the first-floor flat before CS gas canisters were fired inside. Paul King, 37, who lives next door, said he had been watching television when police phoned his flat. "They told us to get out fast and when we looked out the window the street was swarming with armed police. We came out with our hands on our heads.. "I then heard the sound of gunshots, around eight or 10 shots, before it went quiet for about 10 minutes. Then there were a few more shots." The flat was last night being searched by forensics officers. Meanwhile, a suspicious package was found in north-west London which may be linked to the four bombs recovered since Thursday's attempted attack. Scotland Yard said the package was found by a member of the public in bushes in the Little Wormwood Scrubs. The find followed a series of security alerts across the city. The alarm first sounded on the Tube network when emergency services were called to Mile End station after passengers smelled burning. Police sources later described the incident as "amounting to nothing". The Metropolitan Police confirmed yesterday that a second arrest in Stockwell late on Friday was "in connection with inquiries" into Thursday's attacks. Both suspects, whose identities have not been released, are being questioned at the high-security Paddington Green police station, but speculation was mounting that they are the Hackney bus and the Oval bombers. The armed raid in Harrow Road, West Kilburn, on Friday is believed to have been in connection with the Shepherd's Bush suspect. Under anti-terrorism legislation the men can be held for up to 14 days before they must be charged or released. But Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, said yesterday that he was "extremely pleased" with the progress of the investigation. Detectives are now desperately attempting to prevent al-Qaeda plunging London into a summer of fear with a campaign of bombing attacks on the capital's transport infrastructure and key landmarks. Scotland Yard and intelligence chiefs are hunting a series of radical Islamist terrorists cells they believe are planning up to a dozen further strikes following two waves of attacks in the last fortnight. Investigators fear they are facing a network of "bomb-making factories" across the country, capable of making hundreds of pounds of homemade explosives to sustain a bombing campaign throughout the summer. The cells, independent from each other but operating within the al-Qaeda framework, are understood to have been supplied with the materials to make the devices by a centralised distribution system.

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Afghanistan/South Asia

Pakistan clears 6 of involvement in London

2005-07-18

PAKISTANI security officials have interrogated six people with contacts with the family of one of the London suicide bombers, clearing them of links to the attacks. Phone calls had been made to some Pakistanis from the house of one of the bombers. Three of the four attackers were British nationals of Pakistani origin. The British Government gave Pakistan the names and telephone numbers of some individuals following the July 7 attacks that killed at least 55 people, a security official said on condition of anonymity. Security officials said they had interrogated six people about their links to the family of Shahzad Tanweer. "We have established that these people had business contacts with the family of Tanweer back in London," a senior security official said. "The six interrogated are all cleared now. The telephone calls were made only for business purposes and they were not linked in any way to the attacks." The three ethnic Pakistani bombers recently visited Pakistan and investigators are probing whether they met al-Qaeda-linked militant groups. A senior immigration official in Karachi said Tanweer, 22, and Mohammad Siddique Khan, 30, flew to Karachi last November 19, and left on February 8 this year for Britain. Hasib Hussain, 18, arrived in Karachi on July 15, 2004 from Riyadh. The immigration official said there was no record of him leaving Karachi, but he could have flown out via Lahore or Islamabad. "So far we have not found the links of Tanweer and Khan to Hussain, but it could be possible that they were on different assignments," a Karachi-based intelligence official said. Foreign ministry spokesman Jalil Abbas Jilani, however, said he had no information the three bombers had travelled to Pakistan.

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Britain

6 held in UK under anti-terror laws

2005-07-18

LONDON: Six people have been arrested in Leeds, in the north of England, under Britain’s anti-terrorist laws, but not in relation to the London bombings 10 days ago, police said on Sunday. West Yorkshire police said the arrests took place on Sunday evening in Beeston, a residential district of Leeds from which two of the four apparent London suicide bombers came. “At this stage, these arrests are not being linked to the incidents in London,” a police spokeswoman said. “However, we are working closely with officers from the Metropolitan Police anti-terrorism branch as part of this inquiry.” London’s Metropolitan Police confirmed that the arrests were unrelated to the July 7 bombings in London. One person was arrested in the Leeds area last Thursday as part of a fast-moving investigation into the London bombings that has seen 10 homes and an Islamic bookshop raided in forensic searches. Also, British secret services last year vetted one of the bombers behind the London attacks and judged he was not a threat, said a report on Sunday. The Sunday Times, citing a senior government source, said intelligence agency MI5 had assessed Mohammad Siddique Khan, but concluded he posed no threat and failed to put him under surveillance. The government refused to be drawn. “We never comment on the activities of security services,” said one official. The Sunday Independent newspaper said police had established a link between another bomber, Khan, and Al Qaeda. It said a man who is believed to have attended an Al Qaeda ‘summit’ in Pakistan last year had identified Khan from photographs. The Sunday Times said Khan was the subject of a routine assessment by MI5 officers last year after his name cropped up during an investigation into an alleged plot to explode a huge bomb outside a London target, believed to be a Soho nightclub.

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