"Terror suspects were model citizens; included Heathrow security worker"

Saturday, August 12, 2006

Terror suspects were portraits of prosaic lives
BY MARK HARRINGTON
Newsday (NY)


LONDON -- On the quiet, tree-lined streets of Walthamstow in East London, a
somber Ishtaq Hussain struggled Friday to reconcile the memory of his friend
Ibrahim Savant with the police presence outside the Savant family home a few
doors away.

"He never used to swear," said Hussain, who like Savant is 25 and grew up in
this middle-class community of shoulder-to-shoulder brick and stucco houses.
"He had a big heart. He had so many white friends. ... He comes from a nice
family."

But according to records released Friday by the official Bank of England,
Savant is one of 24 suspects swept up in raids on Thursday as part of what
New Scotland Yard Deputy Commissioner Paul Stephenson said was a plot to
"commit mass murder on an unimaginable scale" by detonating liquid bombs in
as many as 10 planes bound for the United States from London. One of the
suspects was released later Friday.

Revelations about the alleged plot have left many friends and associates of
the suspects -- the first wave in what newspapers here said could be more
arrests, with as many as 30 suspects still at large -- at a loss to fit the
images of mass destruction inside a mosaic of generally comfortable
middle-class lives.

In a media frenzy to identify the suspects, pictures emerged of talented
soccer players, polite neighbors, and British-born children of Pakistani
descent who had assimilated into Western society.

Savant is married and has a 2-week-old child, according to reports. He
changed his name from Oliver to Ibrahim eight years ago and became a devout
Muslim, according to a neighbor who saw the transformation but didn't think
much of it.

"He suddenly starting wearing the white robes, but he was still very
polite," said Hazel Kleinman, 66, who lives next door in the multicultural
neighborhood and has known Savant "since he was a baby." She said he started
college, but she believes he dropped out. "He worked with his brother, Adam,
in the city. His parents are very nice. His mother is an accountant, and his
father is an architect," she said.

Hearing that Savant might be caught up in the terror plot, Kleinman said,
"didn't surprise me -- it shocked me." If he's found guilty, she said, "I
hope they throw the book at him."

All of the suspects identified thus far range in age from 17 to 35 years
old, though most are in their 20s, according to names released of 19 of the
suspects by the Bank of England, which moved Friday to freeze their assets.
One suspect, Abdul Waheed, 21, was born Don Stewart-Whyte and lives with his
widowed mother. His father was a staunch Conservative Party member,
according to The Times of London.

Waheed Zaman, 22, also of Walthamstow, "loves fish and chips and the
Liverpool football club," his sister, Safeena Zaman, 24, told The Sun
newspaper. He even considered a career as a police forensics expert, she
told the paper.

Tayib Rauf, 21, of Birmingham, is the brother of Rashid Rauf, a man police
in Pakistan officially identified Friday as a "key person" in the alleged
plot. The Times reported that Tayib Rauf worked in his father's baked-goods
business.

Teresa Bailey, a London neighbor of another suspect, Waheed Arafat Khan, 24,
said the young man offered to help her when she became housebound several
years ago. She never took him up on the offer, but she had nothing but good
things to say about Khan and his family.

"They were a lovely family," she said, noting that the father, who died
several years ago, was "one of the parent governors for the school." His
death left the wife to bring up a son and four daughters alone. As for the
son, Bailey said, "I don't know what happened." She said she'll believe he's
guilty only if he's convicted.

Another named suspect, Amin Asmin Tariq, 23, is a security worker at
Heathrow Airport. He is also from Walthamstow, where Friday, down the block
from the Savant home, neighbor Ian Norris stood washing his car on an
overcast day.

"It's a surprise," he said. "You've got someone on the road who's possibly a
terrorist. But I can assure you that most of them are nice people."

Meanwhile, Britain remained on a "critical" state of alert. At Heathrow
Airport, police were on a state of high alert and security personnel
maintained restrictions on all carry-on items with the exception of needed
medicine, passports and tickets, according to a British Airways
representative. The number of canceled flights was reported to have dropped
from 652 on Thursday to just 96 by midafternoon Friday.

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