MY DAD.. TH

Zak works with the charity Tuesday’s Children, started after 9/ 11, which supports kids affected by terrorism through counselling, family networks and mentoring.

He said: “I did a university TED talk for Youtube about my past and last year got an email from a young woman involved in Manchester who had watched it. She told me it had given her hope that things and people could change.

“Her message came at a time when I was feeling quite low myself and I saw it as a gift. We’ve had candid discussion about depression and trauma and what effect it’s had on her. She was injured and has been through a few surgeries but s he’s brave, smart and thoughtful.”

Zak became part of t he Forgiveness Project charity that tells the real stories of victims and criminals to help people explore ideas of leniency and understanding.

He has been on a long journey over his dad, often filled with sadness and confusion, which started in the middle of one night in November 1990.

Bleary- eyed, seven- year- old Zak, wearing his favourite Teenage Ninja Turtle pyjamas, was woken, along with his siblings, by his mum.

She claimed their dad had been in an accident and grabbed everything she could carry from drawers and wardrobes. They fled to relatives.

Actually Nosair had been arrested for shooting dead Rabbi Meir Kahane, the then- leader of the farright Jewish Defense League, in a Manhattan hotel.

It was the start of a nomadic, povertystricken life for the now single mum and her kids. They moved 20 times in ten years, initially to escape death threats from JDL extremists, then later to hide from her own husband.

Zak said: “Mum had gone from being a teacher with a husband who was an electrician to being a single mum with no money.”

The family kept moving and changing their names and Zak was always the new boy bullied at school.

He did see his dad at the maximum security Attica Correctional Facility in New York while Nosair was awaiting trial. The boy looks really happy being pushed by his father on a swing.

Egyptian-born Nosair was acquitted of killing of Rabbi Kahane but jailed for 22 years for attempted murder over the shooting and wounding of a postal worker during the attack. After the 1993 plot he admitted shooting Kahane.

Zak recalled the arrest came out of the blue and his mum had been shocked.

He said: “We were a strict religious family and went to the mosque but Dad was just an ordinary dad to me. I recall he was kind and humorous man who had lots of friends that I called uncle.”

But a few months before the killing Zak had a hint of his dad’s dark truth.

The boy’s “uncles” took him to a shooting range on Long Island and when he luckily hit a bullseye one man turned to another and in Arabic said: “Like father, like son.”

Nosair had also threatened reatened to leave his family to fight against inst the Soviets in Afghanistan until Zak’s ak’s grandfather threatened to disown wn him if he abandoned his wife and nd children.

At first Nosair’s family mily mounted appeals against his conviction onviction but any hope Zak had of his dad’s release ended in February uary 1993 with the bombing of the World Trade Center’s North Tower. r.

A month before the blast

Nosair was visited d by

Mohammed Salameh, h, who would be convicted of the bombing. The day after the attack

Nosair phoned