Cousin of 7/7 leader: I'm not the fifth bomber
Suspected of involvement in the London tube attacks, Imran Motala talks of his seven days in police cells Ian Cobain Saturday May 19, 2007 The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlondon/story/0,,2083416,00.html A relative of Mohammad Sidique Khan has described how police suspect him of being a so-called "fifth bomber" who lost his nerve shortly before the July 7 suicide attacks. In the first interview to be given by a member of Sidique Khan's family, Imran Motala described how police repeatedly accused him of being the fifth man whose rucksack bomb was later found in the boot of a car abandoned by the gang. Mr Motala denies having anything to do with the attacks, and was released without charge last week after being kept under covert surveillance for a year, then arrested and questioned for seven days. He accepts that police were right to question him after telephone records showed that he had a series of conversations with Sidique Khan in the weeks before the attacks, but is puzzled that this was not done earlier. "If I had been the 'fifth bomber', I could have set off an explosion in August 2005," he says. Mr Motala is a trained artist, an enthusiastic break dancer, and he likes a drink. When detectives from Scotland Yard's counter-terrorism command came to arrest him, shortly after dawn, they found him in his girlfriend's room at a University of Birmingham halls of residence. "But the police told me they thought my western lifestyle was just a cover," he says. "Once I was at Paddington Green police station, they said: 'It's all there in the training manual for jihad.'" Mr Motala, 22, was arrested 10 days ago on suspicion of "commissioning, preparing or instigating acts of terrorism", along with his cousin Hasina Patel, the widow of Mohammad Sidique Khan, leader of the July 7 suicide bombers, and her brother Arshad. All three were released without charge after seven days. Another man remains in custody. Mr Motala insists that his only real crime is that Sidique Khan married into his family. The police and the security service see matters very differently. At Paddington Green in west London it was repeatedly put to him that he not only aided the bombers but that he was destined to have been one himself. "They didn't just think I had with-held information about the bombings, they thought I was involved, that I was to have been the fifth bomber," he said. "They asked me: 'Are you the fifth bomber? Were you meant to be the fifth bomber? Did you bottle out in the end?'" Mr Motala says police also suspect he was the unidentified male who bought the rucksacks which contained the bombs from a Millets store in Leeds six days before the bombings. While in custody he learned that he had been under surveillance for a year: he and members of his family had been followed, all of his previous employers had been interviewed, and he strongly suspects that his family home in the Lozells area of Birmingham was bugged when West Midlands police raided the property last year, ostensibly looking for firearms. Despite the lengthy surveillance operation, no evidence was found that would justify charges against him. Samples After being arrested, cautioned and handcuffed, Mr Motala was driven to Paddington Green. Inside the police station officers took a hair sample and footprints, and a swab from inside his cheek. The fingerprinting process was so detailed that it took about two hours. He did not ask for a solicitor on the first day because, he says, "I thought I was going to be leaving the same day". He was questioned about his contacts with Sidique Khan, and in particular about a flurry of telephone contacts early in May 2005. He told detectives that most of the conversations were about a trip he was planning to Dewsbury, where Sidique Khan lived, after another cousin living there gave birth. While there, he said, he went out night-clubbing, stayed out all night, and Sidique Khan rang his mobile telephone repeatedly to enquire after him. The detectives also asked him about the 7/7 attacks. "I said it was a cowardly act, that it did nobody any good, that it ruined many people's lives. I said that my way of fighting against the Iraq war was to join the march which was held in London. Suddenly there were a million and one questions about the war and why I opposed it." He says he was also repeatedly asked whether he went jogging or went to gyms, and whether he used to exercise with Sidique Khan. "They wanted to know if I was training for jihad. But I don't go to gyms." He was taken to a small, windowless cell, empty but for a concrete bed, plastic mattress, bedding and a steel lavatory bolted to the wall. The showers, he says, were always freezing and exercise was allowed in a small courtyard, entirely enclosed, always handcuffed and watched by four guards. Before long Mr Motala was being given sleeping pills each night, and examined by a doctor each morning before the police interviews began. He first discovered that his two cousins had also been arrested on the second day of their detention when all three were taken into a room, lined with police, which was linked by video to a magistrates court. The police applied successfully for permission to hold all three for up to seven days. None of the cousins exchanged a word. Mr Motala says he was shown an eight- or nine-page transcript of a bugged conversation between Sidique Khan and Omar Khyam, the leader of a gang plotting a series of fertiliser bomb attacks, who was jailed for life last month. The pair were talking about a young man who was "being tested" but who wasn't yet ready to wage violent jihad. The detectives put it to him that he was the young man. "I think that would be inconceivable," he says. When he was released last Tuesday, Mr Motala discovered his family's home had been raided at the time he was arrested. While his parents, brother and a sister were being driven by police to a hotel, other officers were looking under floorboards, removing photographs, documents, electrical equipment and even two Hoovers. His father, Salem, says the house "doesn't feel the same any more - doesn't feel like home". "It is legitimate to ask me questions about Mohammad Sidique Khan," he says. "I can see why they would want to talk to me about telephone contacts, that's fair enough. But a whole year's worth of surveillance has found nothing, and then they brought me in like that. All they had was telephone traffic with a relative. It makes no sense. And why wait so long to talk to me?" Meanwhile, he says his experience has pushed him closer to Islam. "Praying is all I could do in my cell. I did it to kill time. And I was asking God to get me out." [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: osint@yahoogroups.com Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. 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