There is alot that is morbidly, horrifically fascinating about the lives of the 7/7 bombers. Seeing Mohammad Siddique Khan make a farewell video to his baby daughter as he cradled her in his arms telling her that he was doing all he did because he loved her was one thing.
But the detail of this just sticks out to me for some reason. He was with his girlfriend, talking about a future, as he plotted to murder people by blowing himself up. An unimaginable, horrible, dark compartmentalisation.
They spent a night together at a hotel just six days before the attacks.
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7/7 bomber's girlfriend tells court about secret affairWoman identified as Witness A had been seeing Shehzad Tanweer who killed 26 people on the Circle Line for three yearsThe secret girlfriend of one of the 7 July bombers spent the night with him as they planned their future together less than a week before the attacks, she told the inquests into the victims of the 2005 attacks.The woman, identified only as Witness A, broke down when asked whether she and Shehzad Tanweer, who murdered 26 people on the Circle Line train, had discussed what the future held for him.
Asked by Hugo Keith QC, counsel to the inquests, whether Tanweer had given any indication of his feelings for her during their relationship, which they conducted for several years despite living some distance apart, the woman said, "Yes, I got a good vibe from him. That he, you know, loved me."
"Did he express a wish to spend some sort of future together?" asked Keith. "Yes," replied the woman, who was granted anonymity by the coroner because of her fears of retaliation.
The inquests were told that the woman and Tanweer, who was 22 when he died, had begun a relationship more than three years earlier, which they had decided to keep secret.
They had moved apart but kept in touch by text messages, she said.
In early June 2005, she said, Tanweer had suggested they meet again, but his appearance had changed. "He had blond parts to his hair and eyebrows, and blond hair on his arms."
When she asked him about it, "his reply was that it was sun bleached from [a trip to] Pakistan. I thought it was a little bit strange."
In fact, the inquests were told, the bleaching effect had been caused by the quantities of hydrogen peroxide which he and the other bombers were manufacturing as explosive.
Feeling that "our feelings had got stronger", she agreed to spend the night with him at a hotel on 1 July 2005.Tanweer had not mentioned his fellow bombers, or given any indication that he was becoming radicalised, she insisted. When they last spoke on 4 July, the woman said Tanweer had told her he was going to Scotland and would be back on the following Saturday, 9 July.
"And so may we presume that you must have been as shocked as anybody else about what he subsequently did?" Keith asked.
"I was, yes," said the woman, crying.
The inquests were also shown previously unseen home video footage, in which the bomb plot ringleader, Mohammed Siddique Khan, tells his baby daughter to remember him in her prayers, and to learn to fight because "fighting is good".The footage, which was filmed by Khan's wife Hasina Patel in November 2004, shows the bomber in the living room of their home.
He is holding the six-month baby in his arms, and kissing her repeatedly.
"These cheeks here, these two cheeks," he says at one point. "I'm going to kiss you everywhere."
The video has clearly been filmed to convey a message, however, and Patel interrupts him to remind him that time is running out in the recorder.
Khan addresses the child and says: "Remember me in your du'as [prayers] and inshallah things will work out for the best. Look out for your mother, who needs looking after."
"And be happy," interrupts Patel.
"Yep. Be very, very happy," says Khan. "And learn to fight. Fighting is good. Don't be leaving your mum for anything. You two can both go do things together, fighting and stuff."
Patel, who at one point is heard to say "Not long to go now", tells her daughter: "I think you are going to be hyper like your daddy."
The inquests have already heard that Khan travelled to Pakistan in late November 2004.
Entries in Patel's diary suggest she was surprised when he returned to the UK in February 2005.
This and another video, disclosed in an earlier criminal trial, in which the bomber says an explicit "goodbye" to his daughter, seemed to indicate, said Keith, "that Khan was not intending to return to the UK at all".
Patel was arrested in 2007 on suspicion of being an accomplice in the bomb plot but was released without charge.
Earlier, the inquests were told that police had failed to pursue leads linking Germaine Lindsay, the Piccadilly Line bomber, to a suspected armed robbery five weeks before the bombings.
Lindsay's Fiat Brava was used as a getaway vehicle when three men wearing balaclavas, one carrying a gun, were seen fleeing an incident at a flat in Luton on 27 May 2005.
A witness reported the car's registration plate to Bedfordshire police, while a neighbour said three women and a baby had fled the scene, one of whom reportedly screamed: "Someone's got a gun to my baby!"
But after making initial inquiries about the women, who did not come forward, and having failed to reach the witness, the force allowed the investigation to drop without examining materials taken from the flat or following up checks on the vehicle.
Lindsay's Fiat was found after the attacks parked at Luton railway station, containing a semi-automatic pistol and bullets.
Lady Justice Hallett, the coroner, said it had never been established whether a crime was committed. Grant Maxted, the Bedfordshire detective overseeing the investigation, told the inquests "there was no failing" in his investigation.
The inquests continue.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/feb/15/girlfriend-secret-affair-7-july-bomber
Topic: 7/7 suicide bomber Shazad Tanweer had a 'secret lover'