London bomber's widow speaks

2005-09-23 07:56

London - The young widow of one of the suspected July 7 suicide bombers told how her husband tenderly kissed their young son goodbye for the last time, according to a newspaper interview published on Friday.

Samantha Lewthwaite told The Sun newspaper she believed the mind of late husband Germaine Lindsay had been poisoned by visits to radical mosques in London, Luton and the north.

And she said she will have to one day tell her children what he did.

Police say Lindsay, 19, blew himself up on a Piccadilly Line train between King's Cross and Russell Square stations in the worst of the attacks on London on July 7, killing himself and 26 others.

He was one of the four suspected bombers who carried out attacks on the capital that day.

Gave birth after bombings

But his 21-year-old widow, who gave birth to the couple's second child after the atrocities, told The Sun she believed her partner could not have left without saying farewell to their toddler, Abdullah.

She told the paper she believes she heard him on the stairs of their Buckinghamshire home: "I feel sure he couldn't have gone through with it without seeing him one last time.

"He kissed our child goodbye and then crept off to blow up King's Cross.

"In the morning I found he'd left the keys on a table downstairs. He obviously had no more use for them."

The couple, both converts to Islam, met over the Internet and married in 2002 when, she said, he had been a "peaceful man who loved people".

But he changed after they moved from Huddersfield, West Yorkshire to Aylesbury, and took to disappearing for days on end, visiting mosques around the country.

She had assumed he was at a mosque that fateful Thursday, but said when police interviewed her and showed her CCTV footage of her husband, her "world collapsed".

She gave birth to their daughter, Ruqayyah, this month and told The Sun she "totally abhorred" the actions of Lindsay who used the Muslim name Jamal.

One day, she said, she would have to tell their children what he had done: "Jamal is accountable for his actions 100% and I condemn with all my heart what he has done.

"I will try to remember for my children's sake the Jamal I loved and raise them knowing their father was a man who truly loved them.

"But the day will come when I'll have to tell them what he did."

- AFP