Indian Express : A few normal guys

A few normal guys

LA Times | Washington Post | August 14, 2006

They were middle-class university students and avid cricket players; one was studying biomedical sciences, another worked at Heathrow airport, a third was a bookkeeper and a fourth a taxi driver.

They lived in tidy neighborhoods where Urdu and English mix, along with polo shirts and shalwar kameez, loose-fitting tunics and pants popular in South Asia; where people cheer for the British soccer team after praying at the local mosque on Fridays. Many of the suspects had wives and small children and went to work in the morning and were home for dinner in the evening.

And so to some friends and acquaintances — those who gathered outside the mosques of northeast London and in the quiet suburbs to the west of the city — the possibility that the young British Muslims also might be involved in an audacious plot to explode airplanes over the Atlantic Ocean was almost impossible to reconcile or believe.

“They’re probably being painted as hateful monsters, but they were just normal guys,” Louis Melvin, 26, said as he stood near the Masjid E-Umer mosque in the Walthamstow neighborhood of London with other young men who said they were friends with some of the suspects. “If they were plotting this for the last year, they wouldn’t have been able to spend all that time talking to me about trivial things like soccer,” Melvin said.

The only noticeable feature, some other said, was that in the last few months several of the suspects had become more overtly devout, growing beards, wearing long robes and inviting others to come to mosque to pray. The change was especially marked in the two converts to Islam who had British parents.

There were differences within the group, aged 17 to 35, with some less educated, there were more members from middle-class backgrounds who appeared assimilated into British society than the men involved in last summer’s suicide attacks on the London transit system that killed 52 people. But similar to that group, many of the suspects appear to have become radicalised in Britain and traveled to Pakistan, where they were directed toward violent activity through training or intellectual and spiritual instruction.

In all three communities where suspects were taken into custody — East London, High Wycombe, Birmingham — there are close ties to Pakistan. Local merchants do a steady business in 20-pound sacks of basmati rice and immigrants and their children know the price of a round-trip ticket to Karachi, and even airline schedules, by heart.

“It’s quite common to go back and forth here, everyone does,” said Ali Raza, 31, a taxi driver who was chatting with three Pakistani friends on Friday afternoon across the street from the home of Assad Sarwar, one of those detained.

An example of the ties are Tayib and Rashid Rauf, British nationals and close relatives arrested in the case, one in Pakistan and one in Britain.

Of the 19 suspects in custody and whose assets were frozen by the Bank of England, 14 were from East London and 4 from High Wycombe. The 19th was from Birmingham. Four others were also in custody Friday night in connection with the bombings.

In High Wycombe, the spartan two-story brick house at 36 Walton Drive looks exactly like its neighbors. And on a street where nearly every third house is home to Pakistanis, the occupants, two brothers of Pakistani background and their families, went about their business largely unnoticed. That changed dramatically early Thursday when, with helicopters hovering overhead, police swooped in and grabbed Assad Sarwar, 26, who lived there with his wife and brother.

Sarwar and his brother attended the local school and were enthusiastic cricket players, said Ali Lone, 28, a former classmate, who is now a management consultant.

A neighbor, who called herself Mrs Ali, a 25-year-old homemaker from Lahore, Pakistan, who has lived down the street for the last two years, said the only notable feature of the family was Sarwar’s wife: “The lady wears a burkha, everything covered in black, except her eyes,” she said. “It struck me.”

Some other neighbors, watching from across the street as police in hazard suits walked in and out of the house, said they were befuddled and dismayed by the situation. John Arnold, 28, who knew the Sarwars, echoed the sentiments of several others trying to understand the arrests: “They were just normal kids.”

A few blocks away on Hepplewhite Close was the home of Don Stewart-Whyte, a 21-year old recent convert to Islam, who lived there with his mother and wife. The block is well-groomed with tall trees and flower plantings alternating with plainer houses and white British families alternating with immigrants. Several people in the neighborhood expressed disbelief that Stewart-Whyte would be involved in terrorism.

Lone, a childhood acquaintance also of Stewart Whyte, described him as an exceptionally bright boy who went to Dr. Challoner's Grammar School, for which students had to score well on an entrance exam. Later, however, he dropped out, said Lone.

Another neighbour, Shauib Buhatti, who emigrated from Rawalpindi in Pakistan more than 20 years ago, said Stewart-Whyte had been a normal boy, an avid soccer player, who drank a little and smoked a little, “just like other boys,” but that he had recently converted and sometimes stopped by “to invite me to come with him to mosque”.

Two neighbors said they believed he may have attended an informal mosque a few blocks away affiliated with Wahabis, an extreme strand of Sunni Islam, where on Friday evening a full-bearded man in shalwar kameez refused to answer questions, saying there was no imam working there and the center was only a school — despite a sign on the door saying to “check with the imam or a representative before leaving any brochures or pamphlets.”

On the eastern edge of London, one of the suspects in Walthamstow was the son of an architect and an accountant. Oliver Savant adopted Islam and Muslim dress about 4-5 years ago, said neighbor Hazel Kleinman. “I've known him since he was born,” she said. “We were very shocked.”

Neighbors said Oliver’s mother was British and his father was of Iranian origin. “He was the younger of two brothers, the other older brother was a high flier in the city,” meaning he earned well in London’s financial district.

Walthamstow has long rows of small terraced houses; once Cockney and Afro-Caribbean, it has become largely Muslim in the past two decades, neighbors said. On one side of Queen’s Road was the Masjid-e-Umer Mosque, where several people detained in Thursday’s raids are believed to have prayed. No one from the mosque wanted to talk to the press until they had talked to the building’s trustees.

On the other side of the road was house number 104, with white lace drapes screening the windows, pebble-dash on the outside walls, and two policemen at the door.

It was the home of Waheed Zaman, a 21-year-old studying biomedical sciences at London Metropolitan University, who is another of the educated members of the group. He was also an Islamic activist at the university and was reported to have spoken at Muslim rallies and written about Islam for the student magazine.

Zaman’s friend Nasser Fazal, 23, said: “I spoke to Waheed about the 11 September attacks a few times. He was convinced it was all a Jewish conspiracy.”

Ishtiaq Hussain, 25, who grew up in the neighborhood, said he was friends with both Savant and Zaman. “He’s humble, he’s got a big heart,'' Hussain said of Zaman. “If evidence does come out that they were plotting something, it would be very hard to digest. Very, very hard.”

LAT-WP