Posted on 08/11/2006 2:02:13 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
LONDON - One was an athletic teenager who had grown into a devout young man, another a soccer-loving convert to Islam. The youngest was 17, the oldest 35. Many were born in Britain and all were reared here.
As police held 24 young British Muslims accused of plotting devastating airline bombings, both the authorities and their neighbors sought Friday to understand how ordinary communities spawned a terrifying plot.
Police have not identified suspects, but 19 names were made public Friday by the Treasury after the government froze their bank accounts. They have names of Muslim origin, many of them common in Pakistan. At least 14 of the 24 live in London, four in leafy High Wycombe, 30 miles away, and two in the central city of Birmingham.
It is unclear how the men met or who the ringleader is, although suspicion has fallen on the only one identified who is over 30 — Shamin Mohammed Uddin, 35, of east London.
The father of three of the arrested men, Faisal Hussain, collapsed into tears, telling Britain's ITV News that his sons — Nabeel, Umair and Mehran — weren't involved any plot.
"They went to prayer and they were Muslims, that is the only thing they were guilty of," he said through an interpreter in an interview broadcast Friday.
At least nine of the suspects lived in Walthamstow, a typically polyglot London neighborhood of modest brick houses and small apartment blocks, halal butchers, pubs and fast-food restaurants. It is an ethnically mixed community with a smattering of affluent professionals and a large Muslim population served by several mosques.
"Walthamstow's a happy, chilled-out community," said resident Hajra Mir. "We weren't expecting this."
That sense of shock was repeated across the neighborhood. Residents said it is a friendly, quiet area where people respect their neighbors. Several of the suspects had lived there for many years and attended local schools.
But several men from the neighborhood have been linked to the Saviour Sect — an offshoot of a disbanded radical Islamist group, al-Muhajiroun, which was based in nearby Tottenham and gained notoriety for praising the Sept. 11 hijackers.
A Walthamstow leader of the sect, Abdul Muhid, has been charged with soliciting murder during an angry protest earlier this year over the Prophet Muhammad cartoons published in a Danish newspaper. He had previously been arrested for calling for the killing of British troops while proselytizing at a Walthamstow market.
Last fall, a rally planned by the group at a community center was banned by local officials after organizers distributed leaflets portraying an Islamic fighter holding a rocket launcher outside the prime minister's Downing Street residence.
Local Muslim leaders say the area's major mosques are vigilant about keeping radicals away. But several of the suspects appeared to fit the pattern of radicalization seen in the bombers who attacked the London transit system: young men born and bred in Britain, raised in moderate homes, but drawn to a more uncompromising version of Islam than that practiced by their parents.
Suspect Assad Sarwar, 26, lived with his parents in a run-down house in High Wycombe.
Neighbor Nawaz Chaudhry, 17, said Sarwar had become increasingly strident after the July 7, 2005, transit system bombings that killed 52 people.
"He started talking about terrorism and acting like it's OK to blow up people," Chaudhry said.
Waheed Zaman, 22, grew up in Walthamstow, across from the modern brick Masjid-e-Umer mosque. Neighbors remembered an athletic boy with plenty of non-Muslim friends who had grown increasingly devout in recent years, wearing traditional dress and growing a beard.
"As a kid, religion was never a problem for him," said a childhood friend who gave only his first name, Darren. "I'm a Christian and it was never a problem for him."
Residents said Zaman, a biochemistry student who headed the Islamic Society at London Metropolitan University, did community work, urging local kids to attend the mosque and stay away from drugs.
A few blocks away, Oliver Savant grew up with his English mother and Iranian father. Neighbors recall a youth who loved soccer but had become increasingly isolated from his neighbors after he converted to Islam a few years ago, changing his name to Ibrahim.
"Oliver started putting on Muslim robes and growing his beard long a few years back," next-door neighbor Paul Kleinman, 66, told The Guardian newspaper.
He was one of at least three converts to Islam among the suspects. Neighbors identified one of the High Wycombe suspects as Don Stewart-Whyte, 21, a recent convert who had changed his name to Abdul Waheed. Another High Wycombe suspect, Umar Islam, 28, had a West Indian background and changed his name from Brian Young when he converted two or three years ago.
"In my heart I don't think this boy is bad," said next-door neighbor Parkhash Dhanjal, 62. "He is a nice boy."
One of the transit system bombers, Jamaican-born Jermaine Lindsay, was a convert, as was Briton Richard Reid, who was convicted of trying to blow up a trans-Atlantic airliner in 2001 with explosives hidden in his shoes.
___
Associated Press Writer Katie Fretland contributed to this report from High Wycombe.
A British police officer, second right, stands by as Muslim men attend Friday prayers at a mosque in the Walthamstow area of north east London, near where a number of homes were raided by police, Friday Aug. 11, 2006. British authorities on Friday named 19 of the suspects being held in connection with a plot to blow up U.S.-bound commercial jets and ordered their assets frozen, and Pakistan announced five new arrests. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham)
and if they don't stop puzzling,, the headline may soon read
Homegrown terrorists overrun Britain
Hmmm, what made him into a monster?
Was it his athleticism?
Was it his love for soccer?
Then what could it have been.....oh yeah, the last part of the sentence, you know, the convert to Islam part?
LOL!
could have been taking too many header shots on the soccer field,, and not his Imam..
Coming soon ... to a theater near you.
In 20 years we'll have the same problems as Britain. Isn't multiculturalism wonderful?
It's really very simple, the Queen needs to step in here and lay out what British citizenship means, and the "alternatives to TOTAL compliance".
Nothing makes a Brit snap to like a direct Royal command.
It will feature a group of White Christian Michigan Militia members pissed off at the US Gubment, and their plot to blow up planes.
LOL
They are nothing more than terrorist training camps.
Some were converts, others had parents who moved to England NOT for the love of that country. All of them have one factor in common.
The truth is that they're breeding them there. Time for the Brits to face reality. They didn't face reality in WWII until the bombs rained down.
Little by little and without notice English muslims practiced their hate, until one day.....
"Oliver started putting on Muslim robes and growing his beard long a few years back," next-door neighbor Paul Kleinman, 66, told The Guardian newspaper.
He was one of at least three converts to Islam among the suspects. Neighbors identified one of the High Wycombe suspects as Don Stewart-Whyte, 21, a recent convert who had changed his name to Abdul Waheed. Another High Wycombe suspect, Umar Islam, 28, had a West Indian background and changed his name from Brian Young when he converted two or three years ago.
What do you want to bet they insist on being called Oliver, Don and Brian during the investigation/trial?
Ha,ha you have that right. The irony of the whole thing is that the I-Fs will cut the heads off all the Hollyweird hedonists first before anyone else. As a kid I remember the unending supply of movies about WWII where the Nazis were never depicted as anything but utter evil. There was no attempt to "understand" them. Todays moviemakers cannot make the distinction between evil madmen who would like nothing better than to cut their heads off and their fellow Republican citizens who are trying to protect their witless liberal fellow citizens.
They probably read newspapers and watched TV, in addition to studying their Holy War manual, without being told that these institutions make their money by dishonestly encouraging the hatred of their own countries and sowing political divisiveness that creates the so-called news.
So, they believed what they were learned and decided to blame and destroy the people who they were told were responsible for all the misery in the world.
Christianity down, Islamicism up, and a crusade is reborn.
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