BRITAINS FIRST SUICIDE BOMBER

Britain's First Suicide Bombers tells how Omar, a man from an unremarkable, provincial background, came to believe that by committing suicide and murder, he would achieve martyrdom and find a place in paradise.

Suspected of knowing his plans, Omar's wife, Tahira, and his older brother, Zaheed, were charged with failing to alert the authorities to a potential terrorist act. His older sister, Parveen, was charged with incitement to commit a terrorist act.

The documentary reconstructs key moments from the trials, using transcripts from court, letters and e-mails. The three defendants were found to be not guilty.

Really good doc last night which showed that whilst Omar Sharif's sister may not have known specifics about his plan to become a martyr she certainly knew it was his intention. I can now reveal that the consultant on this programme, Claudio contacted me asking if these two had any connection with Hamza's posse.

Claudio is much more serious than I am, as he's got kids to feed, but it seems he did much the same thing with Bakri's posse I was trying with Hamza's lot. In conversation he l told me that he had a proper "visit" from MI-5, not like the little chat the FIT squad had with me.

This is interesting from the Telegraph:

A BBC documentary tomorrow will claim that Mohammed Siddique Khan, the ringleader, had previously met two British Muslims who went to Israel to carry out a suicide mission.

It quotes an alleged witness, who has not come forward before, as saying that he collaborated with Omar Sharif, from Derby, and Hanif Asif, from Hounslow, north-west London, to recruit young Muslims for training camps in Afghanistan five years ago.

Kursheed Fiaz, a businessman who runs an information technology company in Manchester, says that he had four or five meetings - the first in 2001 - with Khan, who was initially accompanied by Sharif and later by Asif.

If true, this would have significant implications for the investigation into extremist jihadi groups, suggesting closer links than had been realised.

However, this connection is unknown to police and MI5 officers who have been compiling a profile of Khan and his associates in the year since the London attacks. There is some scepticism about the claim among counter-terrorism specialists, not least that the operation mounted by the two Britons in Israel was carried out by Hamas, not al-Qa'eda.

The program alleges he had contact with Abu Hamza. This maybe true, I don't know. I very clearly remember when asked whether he knew them Hamza answered in typical style

"When people shake my hand I say, brother don't tell me your name, so that if ever I am upside down with someone hitting the soles of my feet no one can beat it out of me." he added "I hope they are in paradise."

As outlined in the doc, Claudio met the guy as Omar Bakri's right hand man. It certainly seemed to me that there was no friendship between Bakris group and Hamza's lot if not open enmity. which would suggest no connection, but as I say, i don't know.

For me, this was the first program which doesn't shy away from the big question "why" they did it. The psychological signs from the words of their friends seem so obvious after the event. Young Muslims so dangerously distant from the humanity around them by their own decisions and their place in the current history of british immigration. You see the answer very simply in the videos they made, and in the video Mohammed Sadiqui Khan made which the film finishes with.

They seem to be saying that whilst Muslims are being killed with deaths being swept under the carpet worldwide, and Islam as a nation is being supressed with the backing of western governments, people like them will be amongst us blowing themselves up, eye for an eye.

Terrorism. And I didn't need the deaths of 30-100 000 innocent Iraqis to know that.