Freed terrorist vows he�ll fulfil suicide mission
Justin Sparks
A BRITISH-EDUCATED terrorist released in an exchange of prisoners between
Israel and Hezbollah has vowed to �fulfil his mission� as a suicide bomber.
Steven Smyrek, 32, signed a document renouncing violence before he left
Israel last month, but in a German television interview he said that he was
eager to carry out an attack.
His family in London reacted with concern to news of his release.
Karin Wood, his mother, said: �I�m just terrified to think what he might do,
not just to himself but to other innocent people.�
Smyrek, who was educated at Thornlow preparatory school, Weymouth, is
now in Germany where he is being watched by the police.
Before he left Israel he gave an interview to Eric Friedler, a German
documentary maker. �It�s an honour to die for Islam and for Allah,� he said.
�When the order comes you have to carry it out and there�s no time to ask if
there is a God or not, or to think what will happen after you�re dead,
without feeling you simply have to lay down your life as Allah decreed.�
Smyrek, born in Germany, was arrested by Shin Bet, Israel�s domestic
secret service, in 1997 after being accused of flying to Tel Aviv on a
suicide mission.
He was convicted and given a 10-year jail sentence. He expressed no
remorse in court and even declined an offer to serve his time in Germany,
instead opting to stay among �his people� in Israel�s toughest prison.
He now speaks fluent Arabic. After living with Palestinian and
Lebanese convicts for more than six years, his fundamentalist resolve to die
for the cause has hardened.
Able to pass himself off as either British or German and to move
around the Middle East on a European Union passport, the former public
school boy has come to represent the small but growing danger posed by
�white terror converts�.
Smyrek moved to Britain as a child when his parents divorced and his
mother married an officer serving in the British Army. He received his first
military experience at Thornlow, which provided officer training. Obsessed
with the art of warfare, he later spent four years in the German Bundeswehr
before entering crime.
After a term in jail in the mid-1990s for drug dealing, he learnt
about Islam while working in a Turkish kebab shop in Braunschweig, Lower
Saxony, and was encouraged to join a radical mosque. There he fell into the
hands of two Hezbollah agents.
Under his adopted name of Abdel Karim, the young convert was sent on
the mission to Tel Aviv. Unbeknown to him, he was seated beside undercover
Mossad agents who feared that he may try to hijack the plane. He was
immediately arrested after landing on Israeli soil.
German authorities last week confirmed that Smyrek was one of three
prisoners who had opted to remain in Germany.
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