Posted on 12/31/2001 12:07:47 PM PST by AdrianZ
From tearaway to terrorist - The story of Richard Reid
(Filed: 30/12/2001)
RICHARD REID was born in south London and now languishes in a Boston cell. This special Telegraph investigation traces the troubled life of a murderous misfit. Olga Craig reports.
As she walked briskly down the narrow aisle, the flight attendant scanned the rows of seats.
After 90 minutes in the air and a bout of turbulence, the pilot had extinguished the "fasten seatbelts" signs, her colleagues were stacking drinks trolleys in the galley behind her and some of the passengers were massaging aching limbs as they tried to doze.
American Airlines Flight 63, from Paris to Miami, had taken off on time and was expected to land 10 minutes early.
There was no reason, the flight attendant later told a former colleague, to think anything other than that it would be an uneventful shift to be followed by a two-day stopover in Miami.
She was wondering, as she nimbly negotiated the aisle, whether she would have time the next day, December 23, to buy some last-minute Christmas gifts.
Then she smelt the distinctive, acrid odour of sulphur: a match had been struck. Someone was flouting the no-smoking ban.
As she scanned the seats, a passenger pointed to the tall swarthy figure in row 29. As she approached the man, Richard Reid, angrily telling him to put out the match, he glanced up and then pushed the still burning match into his mouth.
When she turned her back to inform the crew of the incident over the intercom, he lit another one.
As Reid bent down to touch his black sneaker with the match, she saw a fuse-like cord dangling from its heel.
"I tried to grab it but he pushed me into the bulkhead . . . we were struggling, grappling," she says.
A male flight attendant rushed to help her restrain Reid as she grabbed a glass of water from a passenger's tray and threw it into Reid's face.
Two passengers grabbed his arms and later, with the help of a doctor, managed to inject Reid with Narcan, a sedative.
But for the swift action of the flight attendants and other passengers, Flight 63 would by now be seared into the world's memory: synonymous with the death, terror and destruction for ever associated with September 11.
Richard Reid, a reclusive, ill-educated misfit from Britain whose early life was punctuated by a string of petty crimes and who had turned to Islam because he felt shunned by his family, had packed sufficient explosives inside his shabby black trainers to blow a hole through the fuselage of the plane and send it spiralling into the sea.
Trained, in all likelihood, in terrorism by al-Qaeda - probably in Afghanistan - he had studied the skills of the suicide bomber: he would, he believed, die in a blaze of infamy, a martyr in the eyes of his al-Qaeda brothers.
Astonishingly, in the past six months, he managed to criss-cross some of the terror capitals of the world as he plotted his alleged murderous attack, foiling security checks in several countries and tricking consulate staff into giving him a new passport despite the fact that he had ripped out several pages of his old one to cover his tracks.
Last Friday, Reid, 28, a 6ft 4in shambling figure with a loping gait and drooping shoulders, was remanded in custody at Boston's district court, charged with intimidation and interfering with Flight 63's crew - offences that carry a 20-year sentence.
As he sat, manacled, in the crowded courtroom, this time shod in black flip-flops which he tapped rhythmically on the floor, there was little in his docile demeanour to suggest that he could be a ruthless murderer.
At home in England, Reid's parents knew nothing of his espousal of terrorism until they saw their son on television - his eyes hooded and downcast, his coat collar shrouding his head - after he was arrested at Boston airport.
Shaken and disbelieving, they have both spoken of their conviction that he is not an evil man: Reid's aunt has talked of the "lonely lad with the empty life" who "found solace with his Muslim brothers".
And certainly his background suggests that he was a vulnerable, easily manipulated misfit with a grudge against what he saw as a cold and unjust society: a young man who latched on to a faith he believed would give him the identity he lacked and the revenge he sought against the society in which he was raised.
Just two days before he began his mission, Reid telephoned Madeline Reid, his aunt, from abroad, to ask if she had converted to Islam.
The call was brief, ending with Reid telling his aunt, whom he called Lyn, that he loved her. It was, he must have thought, his final farewell to the family he believed had all but abandoned him.
"He was so lonely, his life was so empty," says Mrs Reid. "He found solace with his Muslim brothers. With him, it became much more than a religion, they became his family."
As she struggles to justify her nephew's actions, she says: "I don't believe for a second, from my conversations with him, that he was burning with hatred against the West. I believe he was very vulnerable and they asked him to do something.
"He called them brothers and he believed he owed them loyalty. They had become his family. Wouldn't you be prepared to die for your family? Most people would. I believe he thought he was in a holy war."
Whatever Reid's beliefs or his commitment to a jihad, a holy war, his misguided obsession could, if he is found guilty, have ended 197 lives. Had he used a lighter rather than matches, say the FBI, he would doubtless have succeeded with his attack.
Richard Reid was born the only son of Lesley Hughes and Colvin (Robin) Reid, in Farnborough Hospital in the south London borough of Bromley in 1973.
His father, a railway worker, had met Lesley - the daughter of an accountant and a magistrate - when she moved to London from Newcastle to study.
They married in 1973 but by the time Richard was born his father was spending yet another spell in prison for car theft (in all, he has spent 18 years of his life in jail) and Lesley took the baby back to the couple's home in Bromley.
Photographs of the family, taken when Reid was three, show an ill-matched couple - Colvin Reid is 6ft 8in, Hughes not quite 5ft - looking uncomfortably into the camera.
Their son, his dark curly hair already shoulder length, sits jauntily in the crook of his father's arm.
Within just one year, Reid senior had left home and father and son were to have little future contact - with the exception of one chance meeting which was to have fateful consequences.
A quiet, introspective child who showed little academic prowess, Reid failed his 11- plus examination and, in 1984, was sent to the Thomas Tallis secondary school in Kidbrooke, south-east London. He made few friends. "He made it difficult to like him," one former classmate says.
"He was always a bit weird and not very good at anything. He always tried to act tough, to play the hard man. Frankly, he didn't come to school much. He bunked off with kids he met on the streets."
By 15, with a poor academic record, Reid was barely literate and spent his days on shoplifting sprees.
At 16, as soon as legally possible, he left school for good. Within a year, after viciously mugging a pensioner, he had been sentenced to his first spell at Feltham Young Offenders Institution.
It was there that Reid's interest in Islam began. As with many inmates, he was attracted to a religion that seemed to offer succour to the disaffected, and he was an easy target for the imams - many of whom have been branded religious fanatics. It wasn't, however, until he was released, at the age of 17, that his interest turned to obsession.
Although he had had little contact with his father, the pair met up, purely by coincidence, on the boy's release.
His father was unsurprised that his son had become disenchanted with life. Jobless, socially inept and with few friends, Richard spoke broodingly of his depression: he told his father how he had been subjected to racist abuse and how he felt his life was meaningless.
"He was pretty down hearted," Reid senior, who had converted to Islam in the mid-1980s, remembers.
Reid senior, whose father was Jamaican, brought up his son in the Christian faith. Now he spoke glowingly to his son of the peace his new religion had brought him.
"I told Richard I had converted because of racism. I said to him, 'Why don't you become a Muslim, they have treated me all right'.
" I certainly don't feel guilty about encouraging him because the sort of Islam I encountered was about loving mankind - it wasn't about blowing up planes."
Reid did not seem overly interested and father and son again lost contact. For the next six years, the son continued his life of petty crime.
In 1995, when he was released after yet another sentence for mugging, he recalled his conversation with his father and began attending the Brixton mosque in south London.
Initially, Reid became a model convert. He studied the Koran daily, learning everything he could about his new faith.
He changed his name to Abdel Rahim and got a job as a dishwasher in a hotel and later sold incense in a Brixton store. His father now says he had hopes that his son would give up crime - although he admits he was a poor role model.
Abdullah Anderson, 32, another British convert, who met Reid at the mosque, recalls him as an enthusiastic student. "He loved Islam, he wanted to know everything about it. He was open and friendly.
"He didn't wear a shalwar kameez and didn't grow a beard, mostly he just dressed in T-shirts and jeans, but he embraced the Koran. He told me he thought Islam was a religion of love and discipline.
"I do remember thinking, though, that he was parroting others, that he had not really understood what he read."
Then, in late 1997, Reid began to change. At the mosque, he had met Zacarias Moussaoui, a French national - who has since been imprisoned in America, suspected of being the 20th hijacker during the September 11 attacks - and his radical Islamic friends.
He shunned Anderson and began spending all his time with the secretive extremists, who belonged to an organisation which targeted disaffected black youths from London's deprived areas and, according to Anderson, preached hatred of Israel and America.
Reid became confrontational and rowed fiercely with Adbul Haqq Baker, the mosque's imam, over Reid's increasing willingness to support violence.
"He came to believe that violence was necessary to triumph over evil," says Anderson. "He said that if people got hurt, that was their problem."
Within a year, Reid had swapped his jeans for battle fatigues. "He was selling Islamic books at Brixton market and had adopted this mask-like expression," Anderson says.
"I thought it was all a hard man pose but now, maybe, I think he really had begun to believe in a holy war."
In 1998 Reid suddenly disappeared from the Brixton streets and from the mosque. He told none of his fellow worshippers of his intentions and said to his parents, with whom he now had only spasmodic contact, that he was "going overseas".
Lesley Hughes believed her son was in Pakistan but his father claims that he told him he was going to Iran.
"After that he just disappeared," says Reid senior. "I got one letter from him saying he was following the Muslim faith to the letter and planned to stay in Iran.
"He didn't say anything about jihad or holy war - if he had, I would have had a word in his ear. Religious violence is not on.
"That said, my son is a determined boy. I can imagine him being determined enough to blow himself to bits. But I just can't imagine him wanting to hurt anyone else doing it - unless he was brainwashed."
Reid did, as his mother believed, move to Pakistan and it is there that his extremist beliefs were fostered. It is thought that he trained with Moussaoui in al-Qaeda camps there and in Afghanistan.
As a senior intelligence officer in Afghanistan's new government now confirms, it is highly likely that the bulk of Reid's terrorist training was carried out there.
"It was in this country that the `tourist terrorists', as they were known, were trained," he says. "It is 90 per cent likely that Reid was one of those who were trained at Spin Boldak, the former Taliban base near Kandahar."
It was not until last summer that Reid returned, briefly, to this country. It was here that his alleged mission was meticulously planned - its execution beginning in earnest in July. In the middle of that month, Reid flew from Heathrow to Israel on El Al.
At Heathrow, his shoes and bags were thoroughly searched when his furtive behaviour aroused suspicions. It was to be the first of many security checks he would face yet, astonishingly, he never appeared on any international watch list. He was, however, allowed to board.
Once in Israel, he joined up with Hamas fanatics before crossing the border into Egypt and travelling on to Cairo to meet Islamic extremists. From there, he moved to Istanbul, then on to Pakistan.
Although there is no evidence that he crossed the border to Afghanistan, it is doubtful that Reid, by now an Islamic zealot, could have resisted the opportunity to meet al-Qaeda operatives there.
Certainly Taliban prisoners who have been shown his photograph claim to have seen him in the country's training camps and say he met Osama bin Laden several times.
On December 7, he flew to Brussels where he tricked consulate officials into giving him a new British passport, even though several pages of his old one had clearly been ripped out in an effort to cover his tracks.
A week later, he arrived in Amsterdam where he paid £1,000 in cash for customised sneakers - the type worn by basketball players - which he stuffed with explosives.
On December 17, he took a high-speed train to Paris, paid £1,300, again in cash, to a travel agency for a two-way ticket to Miami and Antigua.
The next day, on December 18, he telephoned his aunt "Lyn" before setting off for his flight to Miami. It was obviously his intention to detonate the explosives on board this flight, but he was again stopped at security and questioned.
French police were so concerned that they did not allow him to board and kept him overnight for questioning. Astonishingly, however, he was released and boarded Flight 63 the next day.
Reid's aunt was surprised to receive the call from her nephew. "I asked him where he was calling from and he just said Europe," she recalls.
"When I asked if he was coming to England, he replied that he would, 'God willing'.
Then he asked me if I had become a Muslim yet. I said I had read the leaflets he had given me but that it was not for me. I am a Christian. He said that was all right, but he sounded disappointed. I told him I loved him and he said he loved me, too."
To "Aunt Lyn", the nephew she loves has little similarity to the man held on terrorist charges. "He wrote a letter to me in which he expressed anger at Muslims who did not practise celibacy before marriage or abstain from drinking alcohol," she says.
"He talked of his hopes of finding a Muslim wife. The sad thing was that he asked me to give his greetings to his father. They had so little contact."
The letter Reid wrote was misplaced for months and his aunt now wonders if, had she responded earlier, her nephew might have abandoned his alleged terror plan.
"It makes me so angry that he may have thought his family did not care. I don't condone what he did but he was so lost and so lonely that these people were able to take over his actions in this way," she says.
This weekend, as Reid is held at the Plymouth House of Correction in Boston, his aunt is praying that he will not be ill-treated.
"I pray to God that he is not beaten up in jail. I pray to God to keep him safe." She is likely, with the exception of his family, to be the only person who is praying for him.
Additional reporting by Charles Laurence in Boston, Rajeev Syal and Daniel Foggo
Own Drummer
Thanks for posting this one!
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That is odd. Narcan is used mainly to treat narcotic/opiate overdoses.
Own Drummer
Article does not mention that Shoe Boy Reid, like Rat Boy John Walker and Djamel Beghal, the leader of the cell in France that was planning to blow up the U.S. embassy in Paris, belonged to Tabligh-i-Jamaat while being radicalized.
Expensive sneakers!
Confirmation here that Reid bought the sneakers in Amsterdam.
So how did the "read" the Koran and learn it so well?
His father says, "my boy!" Hey, he's 28 years old!
Geez these people are pathetic.
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