Author: Amit Roy
Publication: The Telegraph
Date: May 3, 2003
The Indian high commission in London
has taken steps to make it harder for suspected British terrorists of Pakistani
origin to slip into India, it was claimed today.
This follows disclosure from Israeli
authorities that the latest suicide bombings in Tel Aviv on Wednesday,
in which three persons were killed and more than 50 injured, were carried
out by Asif Mohammed Hanif, 21, who allegedly carried a British passport.
The place of birth on Hanif's passport was given as Bhowani in India.
Another British passport holder,
Derby-born Omar Khan Sharif, 27, said to be his accomplice, escaped after
his bomb failed to explode.
According to diplomatic sources
in London, all visa applications from people of Pakistani origin in Britain
- many of the younger generation are now British born - have been automatically
referred back to Delhi for clearance since April last year. Processing
can take up to four weeks while checks are made.
The action is said to be "reciprocal"
because of the reluctance of Pakistani authorities to grant visas to British
passport holders of Indian origin, many of who have been journalists.
Hanif is not the first Briton to
have been involved in terrorist violence. In January last year, Omar Saeed
Sheikh masterminded the kidnap and murder of The Wall Street Journal reporter
Daniel Pearl in Pakistan. He was sentenced to death in Pakistan last year.
Sheikh, originally from Wanstead,
east London, attended a British public school before dropping out of the
London School of Economics. He acted as a tour guide in Delhi and was involved
in the kidnap of British tourists in India. He was captured in India but
later had to be handed over to Pakistan, where he resumed his terrorist
activities. In January 2001, after an explosion in an army camp in Kashmir,
it was claimed that the suicide bomber involved, Mohammmed Bilal, was from
Birmingham.
Indian diplomatic sources said they
had urged the British to take terrorism in Kashmir more seriously. "If
you don't, it can come back to haunt you," was a typical comment today.
Hanif and Sharif are said to have
entered Israel from the Gaza Strip several weeks ago. They checked into
a Tel Aviv backpackers' hostel, featured in a Lonely Planet guide, hours
before their attack.
It has now been revealed that Hanif
worked in a duty-free shop at London's Heathrow airport from August 1998
to December 2000.
Speaking at the family home in Hounslow,
west London, Hanif's brother Taz said: "I just can't believe it. He was
just a big teddy bear - that's what people said about him. We used to watch
the news and our parents said the suicide stuff is not good. What do you
achieve by killing yourself and killing other people? If he did do that,
it was wrong - but I can't believe he did."
Taz lives in the house with family
members, including another brother. It seems that Asif had been studying
Arabic at Damascus University in Syria. Hanif's other brother Asum said:
"We knew him as a lovely person. We never thought he had extremist views.
It has been a few weeks since he was last in contact."
The man said to be his accomplice,
Omar Sharif, had received a good education in Derby. For a couple of years,
he attended a preparatory school that is a feeder for Repton, a famous
public school. He is thought to have studied IT at university and been
a computer salesman after graduating. In London, Sharif met and married
his wife, Tahira, and the couple have two children.
Sharif's father, Sardar Mohammed,
from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, made his money through a string of fast-food
restaurants and a health club. Both he and his wife, Rashida - she had
five other children before him - died several years ago. But for some curious
reason they registered their son under three different names in the months
after his birth - Javad Khan, Omar Sharif and Javad Sharif.
The alleged involvement of Hanif
and Sharif in terrorism has serious consequences for the 1.6 million-strong
Muslim community in Britain, which will undoubtedly feel threatened because
of the activities of a small extremist fringe element. The British security
forces will now try to find out how disaffected young Muslims are recruited
in the UK by terrorist organisations.
There is the growing worry that
terrorists will soon pick targets in Britain. There are several British
terrorist connections. London-born Richard Reid, 29, an al-Qaida sympathiser,
tried to carry out a suicide attack on a Paris-to-Miami flight in December
2001. He was overpowered by passengers as he tried to ignite explosives
in his shoe and was jailed for life in the US in January 2003.
Seven Britons captured during military
action against the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001 are also being held without
charge at Camp X-Ray in Cuba. They include Shafiq Rasul, 24, a former law
student from a Muslim family, Asif Iqbal, a factory worker from a Pakistani
family and student Ruhal Ahmed, both 20. All are all from Tipton in the
West Midlands and were found with the Taliban in Afghanistan at the end
of 2001.
Security sources claim that between
200 and 300 British-based Muslims have gone out to Afghanistan, Chechnya,
Kashmir and Yemen to fight and, in some cases, to receive terrorist training.
The member of parliament for the Birmingham seat of Perry Barr, Khalid
Mahmood, said the latest news was "shocking" but came as little surprise.
"There are people who have been
tolerated for too long in this country, who have been allowed to preach
their vile doctrines. Young British Muslims probably don't know enough
about their own religion to challenge these fanatics," he said.
