UK bombs: SA mom in safe house

2005-07-13 23:10

Ivor Prince and Sarel van der Walt

London - The son-in-law of a South African woman may have been one of the suicide bombers responsible for last week's terror attacks which claimed the lives of at least 52 people in London.

Farida Patel, daughter of the late Ismail Patel, a former anti-apartheid campaigner, was taken to safety with the rest of her family by police after Tuesday's eight-hour raid on six houses in Leeds.

Mohammed Sadique Khan, 30, who is suspected of being the bomber killed in the tube train at Edgware Road, was married to Patel's daughter, Hasina, 27.

They had an eight-month-old baby.

Police had kept a watch since the weekend on Patel's house in Thornhill Park Avenue,Dewsbury, before they raided it early on Tuesday morning.

Patel, a widow originally from Germiston, married a British citizen and had lived in England for the past 30 years or so. She was well known in community circles in Leeds.

She lived in the house with her son, Arshad, 28, his wife, Khadija, and their eight-month-old baby.

Visited Pakistan regularly

Patel's father died in 1973 after being under house arrest for about 10 years in South Africa.

Khan, who visited Pakistan regularly, had a house not far from his mother-in-law. The police also searched his house.

Neighbours described the Khan couple, who both had university degrees, as "upstanding people".

Policemen in white suits and masks seized two silver-coloured cars, a Ford Escort and a Honda, at Patel's house.

It was learnt that one of the cars belonged to Khan, who was last seen in the previous week.

A spokesperson for police in Yorkshire West, commenting on the seizure of the cars on Wednesday, said: "The driver of one of the cars will not return. Nor has he been arrested."

Some of the bombers had recently undergone "religious training" in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Police warned that because explosives had been found in one of the houses in Leeds and in a hired car the attackers had used and left at Luton railway station, might indicate more attacks were planned.

Tried to win martyrdom

They also were worried about information that about 200 other trained British terrorists were willing to die as suicide bombers.

Informed sources said on Wednesday that the four who planted the bombs had tried to win martyrdom for themselves by forming a "burning cross" - placing bombs on trains travelling in an eastern, western and southern direction.

They presumably wanted to explode a bomb on the northern line as well, but, last Thursday, it was out of action because of an earlier fault.

The man who was supposed to place that bomb later detonated it on the bus, police believe.

- Beeld