Isis suicide bomber grew up ‘normal lad’ into dancing and basketball
FORMER SCHOOL FRIEND SAYS TERRORIST CHANGED HAVING BEEN ‘BRAINWASHED AFTER GETTING IN WITH THE WRONG CROWD’
A FORMER friend of Manchester suicide bomber Jamal Al-Harith has described how he turned from a bubbly schoolboy who liked basketball and break-dancing into a radicalised terrorist.
Al-Harith – who was born Ronald Fiddler and raised in Moss Side – detonated a car bomb at an army base near Mosul earlier this week, killing an unknown number of Shiite Muslims.
Now a former school friend has told how he was transformed from a bright, bubbly and popular pupil to a terrorist for so-called Islamic State terror group.
“What he did was wrong. It’s almost like he was brainwashed,” he said.
Al-Harith had been held captive at the maximum security Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba between 2001 and 2003 after American troops had arrested him in Kandahar for allegedly fighting alongside the Taliban against British and US troops in Afghanistan. Al-Harith in 2004, left, and in 2002, centre and right
The web designer protested his innocence – claiming he was in Afghanistan to teach English – and his case was championed by civil rights groups and the Tony Blair government, who campaigned for his release.
Now one of Al-Harith’s former friends at the former Ducie High School in Manchester has told the M.E.N. about his remarkable transformation from bright and popular pupil into a suicide bomber for the so-called Islamic State.
The former friend, from south Manchester, said: “He was all right. He was just a normal lad and got on with everyone. We were in the same form and the school basketball team. He liked his music and dancing, break-dancing, rare groove and R&B. He was very bubbly.
“They would go into town with a mat and a boom box and perform. He was always one of the popular guys, doing his dancing. He was in the school basketball team as well. He played guard as he was pretty tall. He wasn’t brilliant but he stayed in the team. “He started in the middle set and went up to the top set at school. He liked technical drawing, woodwork and metalwork. He was good at English and maths. He was pretty academic. “I saw him a few times after he got out of Guantanamo Bay. He was wearing Islamic dress and saying everything was false. “He mentioned the compensation claim he was going through. It was just a chat with an old school mate really. I knew he was deep into his religion at that time but I didn’t mention it. If anything, he was the one bringing it up. Jamal Al-Harith’s former school friend
“What he did was wrong no matter what. Everybody has their own beliefs but it’s extreme.
“You are taking life but you are claiming you are all under one god so you are contradicting yourself.
“I’m not going to say I disagree with the religion but I disagree with what they are doing.
“I can’t look on him differently as a friend because I only knew him as a friend.
“I’d say he got in with the wrong crowd. He had an open mind. His brain was like a sponge. He would just soak things in. It was almost like he was brainwashed. Before, he was a lively guy but he became a different guy. Everything slowed down, literally. He wasn’t the same.
“I’m angry. When you have grown up with someone you don’t expect them to do something like that. You just don’t take someone’s life over religion. That’s the way I look at it.”
Contrary to Al-Harith’s family, who suggested he was radicalised at Guantanamo Bay, the friend says was ‘98 per sure he was radicalised before then.’