Jamaican-born convert to Islam 'coordinated fellow bombers'
One-time studious schoolboy 'knew shoe bomber' and had vital contacts, police believe Audrey Gillan, Ian Cobain and Hugh Muir Saturday July 16, 2005 Guardian The nineteen-year-old suicide bomber responsible for the King's Cross explosion, known as the "fourth man", is thought to have played a key coordinating role in the London bus and tube terrorist atrocities that killed 53 people, it emerged yesterday. Anti-terrorist detectives now believe Jermaine Lindsay, who changed his name to Abdullah Shaheed Jamal when he converted to Islam, may have been the most senior of the four bombers. It is known that the three other bombers travelled from West Yorkshire to London via Luton. After they detonated their devices to deadly effect, further bombs were found at Luton station in Jamal's red Fiat car. Officers believe there may be significance in the fact that the group travelled to meet Jamal in Luton rather than going direct to London from Leeds. They are also trying to establish whether the devices left behind in Jamal's car were intended for other suicide bombers to use on this or on future missions. Jamal, 19, a convert who was raised in Huddersfield but born in Jamaica, is believed to have had the connections that made the terrorist operation possible. Newspaper reports, as yet unconfirmed, claim that Jamal also spent time at Brixton mosque in south London with Richard Reid, the convert jailed after trying to blow up an airliner with a bomb in his shoe. On Thursday it emerged that the bombs used in London contained a substance similar to that within the device used by Reid. A knowledgeable source said: "There is no doubt that he was a main player. He moved around a lot and seemed to have the contacts. But his movements themselves throw up a lot more questions. Piece by piece we are putting this together." How Jamal came to choose a path that would end in such notoriety baffles police and acquaintances alike. There were no clues in what many describe as a gentle nature that he had the capacity to kill on such a grand scale. He was born Jermaine Maurice Lindsay in the West Indies but spent much of his childhood in the Huddersfield suburb of Dalton in Holays, a street of semi-detached municipal-style homes. The son of a single parent, he went to a local schools, Rawthorpe Junior, a church junior school and then the Rawthorpe secondary school, where he was known for a love of sports, particularly athletics. Theresa Weldrick, who was in the year below at secondary school, said she was stunned to learn of his part in the London atrocities. "He was really nice. He was one of those people you never expected to get into trouble. He was just so good. What possessed his soul?" Sally Lewin also attended Rawthorpe and grew up a little awed by Jamal. "He did all his exams and was in the top group. He was dead brainy." Little is known about his home life but aged 15 or 16 he experienced an event that may today appear as a turning point. His mother Mariam converted to Islam and acquaintances believe that she encouraged her son to do the same. He changed his name to Jamal, Arabic for beauty. Towards the end of his secondary school education, he started to wear traditional Islamic dress of a long shirt and cap. His younger sister Lauren also began to wear the traditional headscarf. Jamal's mother was reported to have remarried and moved to Cleveland, Ohio, about three years ago, but federal sources told journalists in the city that she had since moved on elsewhere in the US since then, and had appeared in Florida and New England. Her immediate whereabouts were not clear yesterday. The public housing estate in Cleveland that was her last known address has been torn down. Before she left for the US, she found her son a house in the Birkby area of Huddersfield and it was there that he began a relationship with Samantha Lewthwaite, the white Englishwoman who is being guarded by police at a safe house and who is pregnant with their second child. Jamal and Ms Lewthwaite lived in a terraced house, paying the £63 a week rent by claiming housing benefit. He would supplement his income by working occasionally as a carpet fitter and with a sideline, selling mobile phone covers at the local Saturday market. Neighbours still remember him as "respectful and well-mannered". He would sometimes pray at the nearby Omar Masjid mosque where the imam, Naseeb Aldi, was yesterday struggling to come to terms with events. "This is a big surprise," he said. The couple had their first child, Abdullah, last July. Later they moved south to Aylesbury, where Ms Lewthwaite was born and educated and where her closest relatives still live. But for all the time she was there, she had limited contact with members of her family. The couple had even less contact with neighbours in Northern Road, Aylesbury, where they rented a tidy red- brick house on a six-month contract. The house was yesterday being searched by anti-terrorist squad officers for a third day. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005 Post message: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe : [EMAIL PROTECTED] List owner : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Homepage : http://proletar.8m.com/ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
