UK student bomber ‘on terror list for years’
‘Who would have thought we would have maniacs who would commit this kind of atrocity?’
THE Easter Sunday suicide bomber who lived and studied in the UK had been under police surveillance in Sri Lanka for years, it emerged last night.
Abdul Lathief Jameel Mohamed, 36, who studied aerospace engineering in the UK for almost two years, was on a Sri Lankan terror watch list, according to sources close to his family.
The claim raises further embarrassing questions for the Sri Lankan authorities over their failure to stop Sunday’s coordinated attacks. The source, close to his brother, said: “He was under surveillance for years.”
Last night, a picture emerged reportedly showing Jameel Mohamed with a rucksack, thought to contain explosives and a suitcase at the Taj Samudra hotel in Colombo on Easter Sunday.
In the image, obtained by Sky News, he is wearing a baseball cap just like two other suspected bombers pictured on CCTV footage before they struck the Shangri-la hotel.
Security officials say something had apparently gone wrong with the detonation charge, so he left the fivestar hotel before later checking into a guest house in the Dehiwala area, where he detonated the device.
British intelligence officers are now combing through Jameel Mohamed’s UK connections to determine whether he could have been radicalised here.
He flew into the UK on Jan 1 2006 and lived in a rented bedsit in Tooting, south London, before flying home in September 2007. He returned in 2008.
The Daily Telegraph has been told that he was initially denied a visa to enter the UK but that his father – a wealthy tea trader in Sri Lanka – threatened legal action against the High Commission if it did not reverse its decision. Sources insisted Jameel Mohamed was prevented from entering due to “administrative problems” with his visa application, and not because he posed any danger at that time.
He enrolled at Kingston University on an aerospace engineering course as part of a programme tied to the Asian Aviation Centre in Colombo.
Jameel Mohamed is believed to have been the bomber behind the attack on the Tropical Inn guesthouse near Colombo zoo in which two people died. It was Sunday’s seventh and final attack.
His sister, Samsul Hidaya, said her brother had been radicalised during his studies abroad, but added that was following a stint in Melbourne, Australia, rather than in London.
Other acquaintances told The Telegraph that he was “a bit different” from the others. “He was always a bit weird,” said an unnamed friend.
People who knew Jameel Mohamed said that he was a Isil sympathiser.
“But we never took him seriously when he talked about his views,” said a childhood friend. “Who would have thought we would have maniacs who would commit this kind of atrocity and kill all innocent people?”
Following the attacks, members of Jameel Mohamed’s family and some of his friends have been taken into police custody for questioning, including an older brother and a brother-in-law.