Sean O'Neill
London
Times
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
One of the alleged 21/7 bombers had condemned the 7/7 suicide
attacks just days before he boarded an Underground train with
an explosive device in his rucksack, a court was told yesterday.
Yassin Omar, who is accused of attempting to detonate a bomb on
the Victoria Line at Warren Street, was described by a close friend
as a devout Muslim who performed spontaneous acts of charity.
Matthew Dixon told Woolwich Crown Court that he was shocked to
discover that the man he had known for ten years could have been
involved in the attacks on three Underground trains and a London
bus.
Mr Dixon, 26, a product designer, said that he had heard Mr
Omar condemn the suicide bombings on July 7, 2005, in which 52
innocent people died.
“Yassin always said the whole idea of Islam is to bring
people to it,” said Mr Dixon. “He has always been
a strong believer that these kinds of attacks on innocent people
are not achieving anything — you are just alienating people
from the religion.”
After seeing CCTV images of the alleged bombers in the aftermath
of the incidents on July 21, Mr Dixon had joined Mr Omar’s
friends and family in a search for him.
He spoke to Mr Omar’s tearful wife, who had been married
to the alleged bomber for just four days. She told Mr Dixon: “How
could he do this? We have just got married.”
Mr Dixon told the court that he was equally confused. He said:
“If somebody wanted to get married, why would they want
to do this? It didn’t ring true, it didn’t make sense.”
Mr Dixon was giving evidence at the start of the second week
of the trial in which Mr Omar, 26, Muktah Said Ibrahim, 28, Manfo
Kwaku Asiedu, 33, Adel Yahya, 24, Ramzi Mohammed, 25, and Hussein
Osman, 28, deny charges of conspiracy to murder and conspiracy
to cause explosions.
He said that he met Mr Omar, a Somali refugee who lived with
foster parents until he was 18, when they went to the same school
in North London. Mr Dixon said that he spent a lot of time at
Mr Omar’s flat at Curtis House, New Southgate — the
plotters’ alleged bomb factory — where they watched
television, played video games and “chilled out”.
Through Mr Omar he met Mr Yahya, Mr Ibrahim and Mr Asiedu and,
for a while, took an interest in the Muslim religion. Mr Omar
had become increasingly interested in Islam after leaving school
and Mr Dixon said that he accompanied him several times on visits
to mosques, including the Finsbury Park mosque where Abu Hamza
al-Masri was the imam.
Mr Dixon said: “It sounds corny but when you see people
actively practising it, being kind to others, it’s quite
uplifting. It was quite appealing.”
He said that Mr Omar had offered a bed to a mentally ill African
refugee, took in a homeless Indian man and paid visits to people
in hospital. He never heard Mr Omar speak out in support of any
act of terrorism.Mr Dixon said: “He was against the Iraq
war, but . . . he said nothing radical.” Mr Dixon became
an unwitting helper of the alleged conspirators when he accompanied
Mr Asiedu on a trip to buy dozens of litres of hydrogen peroxide,
the chemical that formed the key ingredient of the rucksack bombs.
On May 19, 2005, Mr Dixon drove Mr Asiedu — whom he knew
as Ismael — to two hairdressing supply shops where they
bought high-strength bottles of peroxide and took them to Mr Omar’s
flat. Mr Dixon said that he had been told that Mr Asiedu, a decorator,
wanted the powerful chemical to strip thick layers of wallpaper
from the walls of listed buildings.
In the days after 21/7, as he searched for Mr Omar, he contacted
Mr Asiedu and met him at Finchley mosque.
Mr Asiedu made no mention of his alleged role in the conspiracy
or that he had allegedly lost his nerve and abandoned a fifth
bomb in a West London park. Mr Dixon said: “I mentioned
the (CCTV) picture of Yassin. Ismael (Asiedu) said he was so shocked,
he couldn’t believe it. He was out of sorts, I just thought
it was the shock of the whole thing.”
Mr Dixon said that on July 24 he went to a police station and
made the first of a number of statements.
The trial continues.
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