Suspects were from moderate Muslim families

The Globe and Mail ^ | 08/11/2006 | HAMIDA GHAFOUR AND DOUG SAUNDERS

[BJClinton]

London — When people on Folkestone Street talk about mysterious outsiders, they are usually referring to the yuppie families who are attracted to its long rows of Victorian townhouses with steep walk-up steps, considered real-estate bargains by some.

Here on the streets of Walthamstow, in the working-class suburban streets of northeast London, the Pakistani families who arrived in the 1950s are long-standing and accepted members of the community. It is a place where cockney pubs sit next to halal butchers, the poor whites and conservative Muslims making awkward but generally peaceful neighbours.

But when dozens of police burst into houses on this street and five others in Walthamstow early yesterday morning, another kind of mysterious stranger emerged: Young men from moderate families who had quietly grown beards, started praying and dropped out of mainstream society.

All of the 24 alleged suicide-bomb plotters are British citizens, most of them born in England, police confirmed yesterday. All but two appear to have been children of Pakistani parents who had become fully integrated citizens. Many of them had university educations and steady jobs, and some ran small businesses.

It now seems that Walthamstow had become the centre of what British police describe as a large-scale terrorist plot to kill thousands of people in dramatic airplane suicide bombings.

Of the 24 young men arrested yesterday, 18 of them were from Walthamstow, most of them life-long residents.

At 5a Folkestone Road, a semi-detached brick house with a covered front porch, police burst into the house of a man who had been known by his neighbours as Oliver Savant, before a mysterious change overtook him.

In 1998, his neighbours say, Mr. Savant changed his first name to Ibrahim, began sporting a long beard and white robes, and started praying at mosques five times a day.

"He was born in the U.K., I've seen him talking on the phone and he sounded proper English," said Arshad Moghul, a security guard who lives three doors away.

Another neighbour, Paul Kleinman, 66, a retired firefighter, said as a young boy Oliver "loved football and played the trumpet. I think he was a very nice polite young man."

"All of a sudden Oliver started to put the white robes on. He had friends who dressed in a similar way who would visit him. I think his dad's an architect and is from Iran, and his mother is English."

Mr. Savant, 25, is now being held in a high-security cell in London's Paddington Green detention centre, awaiting charges.

His transformation may have shocked his old friends and neighbours, but it would not have attracted much attention in Walthamstow. The Pakistani Britons here, most of them from the Punjab region, are often very conservative. Women, especially those in the younger generations, tend to cover their heads. The men don't visit the pubs, leaving the neighbourhood effectively segregated.

Queens Road, around the corner, has tiny, unkempt gardens in front of its houses. In the two houses that were raided here at 3 a.m. yesterday, the families were respected residents.

Suspect Waheed Zaman, 23, is well known as head of the Islamic Society at nearby London Metropolitan University, where he is a student. His sister Safeena said that he had wanted to become a police forensics expert.

"He really believed in making the Asian community more integrated with the West," she said, although other neighbours told reporters that he is a believer in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

A few streets down, on Albert Road, two police officers were guarding a house that was also raided. A neighbour who lives two doors away and didn't want to be identified said it was home to a middle-aged Muslim couple who took in foster children.

"The kids were black and white," she said. "The owner of the house and his wife have been foster parents for years. There were always guys coming in and out. They just said hello and goodbye. They were quiet and never bothered anyone. It's a shock."

Another added: "These days, there are a lot of freaks about. You can only be sure of your own house."

Walthamstow has a large number of police who patrol the streets because drug dealing and petty crime have been problematic in the past. Since the area was regenerated in the last few years with government money, the crime rate has gone down.

The town of High Wycombe, on the distant outskirts of northwest London, was also the subject of intense police scrutiny yesterday, and some of its houses and forest glades appear to have become centres of attention for the alleged cell.

Two mock-Tudor houses on Micklefield Road, with large backyards and several outbuildings that in some cases had been built recently, were raided by dozens of police in the morning. Neighbours said the houses had become centres of late-night activity.

"There were people coming to the house at nighttime, around midnight, almost every night," Peter Whitelock, 77, said of the raided house next door to his. "I have no idea what they were doing there, but they certainly were not living there as they left a few hours after they had arrived."

In High Wycombe, the Pakistani community is large but not as dominant, and neighbours said they had been suspicious of the houses that were raided. Police there also sent a large team to search a section of the Kings Wood, a large public forest near the houses.

In the city of Birmingham, police raided a small office building. Two people were arrested there.

[freeangel]

"moderate my ass"

Hmm, just thinking the same thing. I'm sure these parents are very proud of their kids.

[Killborn]

Hopefully never.