Was Sri Lankan hotel bomber groomed at British university?
One of 9-strong terror gang who left 359 dead in suicide attacks spent year in UK
ONE of the Sri Lanka bombers spent more than a year as a student in Britain, it emerged yesterday.
Abdul Lathief Jameel Mohamed is said to have studied at Kingston University for a year from 2006, raising fears that he could have been radicalised in the UK.
He was among nine members of an Islamic State death squad that killed 359 people and injured more than 500 on Easter Sunday.
The middle- class gang included wealthy brothers Ilham Ibrahim, 32, and Inshaf Ibrahim, 35, who caused carnage at the Shangri-La Hotel and the Cinnamon Grand as guests ate breakfast. Their multi-millionaire father once stood for parliament.
Ilham Ibrahim also travelled to the UK, his father is said to have revealed. It is not known if he visited to study. British sources have been unable to confirm the claim.
Mohamed apparently botched his own attempt to detonate a bomb at a five- star hotel in the capital Colombo.
He is thought to have blown himself up later at a smaller hotel when he examined his malfunctioning device. Police are investigating whether his backpack failed to explode after he tried to leave it at the luxury Taj Samudra hotel, where he had checked in the day before. He may have been forced to take the bag away when a staff member saw it and gave it to him.
Two hours after the co- ordinated blasts across Sri Lanka, Mohamed went to the Tropical Inn, a small hotel in the suburb of Dehiwala, where he tried to examine his bomb’s mechanism, a source said. The bomb then exploded, killing him and one other person.
He is said to have lived in London while studying aerospace engineering at Kingston University, the Daily Telegraph reported. He is then believed to have travelled to Melbourne, Australia, for a postgraduate course.
Intelligence agents are examining connections he made in the UK to establish whether he could have been radicalised in this country and was in contact with jihadists.
Officers from Scotland Yard, MI5, MI6, the FBI and other Western intelligence agencies have flown to Sri Lanka to investigate fears of a resurgent global terror network.
Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attacks and there are growing concerns that battlehardened fighters who fled the group’s crumbling caliphate in Syria are plotting more atrocities.
Intelligence officers are urgently looking for any links the bombers had to British and other European jihadis who may still be at large.
As mourning continued in Sri Lanka yesterday, its defence minister described the bombers as ‘well- educated, middle or uppermiddle class’ men who were ‘financially quite independent’.
Mohamed was also said to be involved in Islamic student bodies, had links to charities in the Middle East, and had travelled in Europe.
The investigation is focusing on the millionaire Ibrahim family and the two brothers whose suicide vests killed eight Britons, including three children, at two hotels.
Chilling CCTV footage has emerged of the moment Ilham Ibrahim and an accomplice took a lift to the breakfast room of the Shangri-La. Wearing backpacks, they appear to discuss their plans in the lift as it arrived at the thirdfloor Table One restaurant. They calmly walk in almost unnoticed while hotel guests eat breakfast. In a split second the plush restaurant becomes a scene of horror as the bomb explodes in ball of flame.
The bloodbath claimed the lives of British lawyer Ben Nicholson’s wife Anita, 42, son Alex, 14, and daughter Annabel, 11.
Danish billionaire Anders Holch Povlsen, the largest shareholder in the Asos online clothes retailer, lost three of his four children in the atrocity. Also killed in the blast were fund manager Matthew Linsey’s son Daniel, 19, and daughter Amelie, 15.
Minutes later, Ilham’s younger brother Inshaf blew himself up at the five-star Cinnamon Grand.
The brothers – the sons of spice trader Yoonus Ibrahim, 65 – were privately educated in Colombo.
A photo obtained by the Mail shows Inshaf wearing a smart designer suit alongside his father among dignitaries at a glittering
‘Often had trouble with his sons’
business awards ceremony. The boys’ father ran for parliament at the last Sri Lankan general election. The brothers were part of a family of eight sons and three daughters raised in a £1million mansion in one of the capital’s most exclusive neighbourhoods.
When police raided the mansion after the bomb attacks, Ilham’s heavily-pregnant wife Fatima blew herself up, killing herself, her unborn baby, three older children and three police officers. Police are questioning another of the brothers, 30-year-old Ijas Ahmed Ibrahim, and are hunting a fourth brother – Ismail Ahmed Ibrahim – whom they say is missing.
A neighbour of the Ibrahim family said last night: ‘Their father has done a lot for the community around here.
‘Most of us rent our houses from him. He is highly respected, but he has often had trouble with his sons.’ Inshaf Ibrahim lived with his wife and their four children – a girl of eight and three boys aged six, four and two – in a £1.5million sixbed mansion with a fleet of luxury cars in the garage.
He owned a copper factory that may have been the source of metal components in the bombs.
Last night, his brother-in-law Ashkhan Alawdeen, a jewellery trader, said of the bombers: ‘They are psychopaths. My sister is beyond devastated that she could have married such a man.
‘He had everything – a good business, a lovely wife and a four adorable children. Why would he do something like this?’
Police say they have identified eight out of nine attackers, one of whom was a woman.
Authorities investigating the attacks have described the heavy backpacks worn by the suicide bombers as ‘crude devices made locally’. After other devices were defused over the weekend, Sri Lanka’s prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe warned that surviving members of the network remained on the run.
Sri Lankan intelligence officials were tipped off about an imminent attack just two hours before the bombings but failed to act.
There have been calls for the head of defence and police to resign over the missed chances.