E TERRORIST

Salameh who was driving the van loaded with explosives. FBI agents also recovered up to 30 letters and documents from Attica linking Nosair to the terror cell.

It emerged during the trial al-qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had helped pay for his defence team.

Nosair was given a life sentence and, away from her husband’s strict religious influence, Zak’s mother started reducing family visits. They eventually stopped. By 16 Zak was questioning the hatred his father had fostered.

Zak said: “I grew up believing Jewish were evil, that gay people were evil. Mum turned to me one day and said ‘ I’m tired of hating.’

“That was the day the world became a brighter place. It was like she was giving me permission to go out and explore the world without hatred.”

Zak’s mum changed her name and has since remarried. While he doesn’t want to give away details for fear of reprisals he says both she and his older sister and younger brother are “doing fine”.

Zak last heard from his father through prison email in 2013. He said:

“My dad wanted to make contact. I was shocked. I wanted to ask him why he chose the path he did, if he regretted it.”

But Zak failed to get answers – and believes his father was trying to radicalise him. He said: “My father became fixated that I was no longer Muslim. I told him

I’d suffered depression and instability because of what he’d done. He said if I returned to Islam all the problems would go away. I ended communication.”

Zak thinks isolation and failure play a major part in radicalisation. His dad had been wrongly accused of a sexual assault within his Muslim community in Pittsburgh, then moved to New Jersey.

Then an electrical accident at work left him without a job in the five years before his first conviction.

Zak now wants to set up a global charity to bring different communities together through art and education. He said: “People can turn away from extremism and I’m proof of that.”