A death unmourned: the lonely end of the failed bomb-maker

Do you remember the film, The Day of the Jackal? At the end, nobody knew who the Jackal was and he was buried in an unmarked grave. If one thinks back, perhaps that's the worst end. I once asked my uncle, Ajit Dasgupta, a very erudite and intelligent man (I bawled like a baby when he died and we were taking his body to the hospital for organ donation), about the point in life? He said, well, son, all you leave behind is your name (in terms of your deeds) and your children.

If that is applied to this terrorist, then think about it, he has been abandoned by his own family, his own faith, his own people. He has been unsuccessful and died the most painful death you can (by burning, and you saw how he was dragged off the car, with his skin and flesh peeling and dropping off). And if Luxemberg is right, if he does reach heaven, all he will get are 72 white raisins.


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A death unmourned: the lonely end of the failed bomb-maker
By Kim Sengupta
Published: 04 August 2007

Kafeel Ahmed's parents were praying yesterday that it was not him who died in a hospital bed, thousands of miles away. They were not disowning him, they said, but they just hoped the man who carried out the attack on Glasgow airport, and had been lying in a coma since, was not their son.

There was no expression of mourning over the death, no one has come forward to claim the remains. The end came 33 days after images of Kafeel, engulfed in flames as he tried desperately to ignite the explosives in the jeep that had been rammed into a terminal, were shown around the world.

The 27-year-old engineer, believed to be the bombmaker for the planned blasts at Glasgow and London, and the central figure in the terror plot, suffered 90-per-cent third-degree burns.

His companion in the Glasgow incident, Bilal Abdullah, an Iraqi doctor also aged 27, is among four people who are charged with terrorism related offences, as is his brother, Dr Sabeel Ahmed.

A cousin, Dr Mohammed Haneef, was arrested in Australia after it emerged that he had given his sim card to Kafeel for use on a mobile phone which was allegedly used in the attack. He was subsequently freed, selling his story to an Australian TV channel before being deported to India protesting his innocence.

Police in India searching through Kafeel's computer were later to find Islamist messages celebrating what happened that day.

Kafeel had received extensive treatment at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary. Surgeons grafted on substitute skin made of shark cartilage and cow tendons. It was a system developed to treat the victims of the 9/11 attacks in New York.

Medical staff dealing with the case privately said that there was little chance of recovery. Ahmed had been in a coma and there were signs of kidney and liver failure. There had also been some criticism of the money spent on the suspected terrorist. The "shark skin" treatment - called Integra Dermal Regeneration Template - alone came to over £20,000, and the total cost of security and medical care is estimated to have been more than £100,000.

Kafeel's parents, Moqbool and Zakia Ahmed, who live in the Indian city of Bangalore, had also pressed for doctors to switch off his life support machine, at one stage saying they would take legal action to enforce this if necessary. Some Muslim groups had claimed that the prisoner was being deliberately kept alive "for medical experiments".

Yesterday a spokesman for the Scottish Executive said: "It was perfectly right that he should have received the appropriate treatment our health service could offer as this reflects the value our society places on human life."

The investigation has been piecing together the role played by Kafeel in the alleged terrorist plot, and the evolution of a young man angry about Iraq and Afghanistan into someone who was prepared to carry out mass murder.

The Glasgow attack followed two days after an alleged attempt to blow up a car outside the Tiger Tiger nightclub in London. The two Mercedes cars used in the attempt are believed to have been driven down from Glasgow to the scene by Kafeel and another man.

Following the Glasgow attack, Kafeel was found to have high dosages of morphine in his bloodstream, leading to the conjecture that they had taken the drug in preparation for "martyrdom". People there at the time spoke of how Kafeel, slightly built and 5ft 7ins tall, seemed oblivious to the blows being rained on him by the police and members of the public.

Investigators now believe, however, that the Glasgow attack had been carried out "in a panic" after police began closing in on Ahmed's Glasgow cell following the recovery, intact, of the London "bomb cars". Kafeel and his companions, they are convinced, were planning further attacks.

They had bought the Mercedes saloons and the Cherokee Jeep used at London and Glasgow. They had also talked to a dealer about the possibility of buying up to 10 more cars.

Police have been checking CCTV footage at the St Enoch shopping centre on Argyle Street in Glasgow after reports Kafeel and another man had been seen reconnoitering the place.

As well as the general shock at the revelation that doctors were involved in the bombing plot, there was also surprise that the Ahmed brothers, coming from a professional family, had taken the road to jihad. Kafeel had spent much of his youth in Bangalore, India's IT hub which is seen as a broadly secular city, and studied aeronautics at Cambridge and Belfast.

However, examination of their background showed that the family had always been followers of a hardline, albeit non-violent, form of Islam. The brothers lived in Iran and Saudi Arabia while their parents had worked there. And, after returning to India, the brothers had tried to persuade their local mosques to adopt a more hardline, Saudi inspired version of Islam.

Following the Glasgow attack, Indian police examined hard disks Kafeel had stored in his computer. They showed keen interest in events in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. They are also said to have found speeches by Osama bin Laden and graphic scenes of violence, including footage of a Russian soldier being tortured by Chechen separatists.

Just before the London and Glasgow attacks, Kafeel had told his parents in Bangalore: "I am involved in a large-scale confidential project. It is about global warming. It involves a lot of travelling. The project has to be started in the United Kingdom ... Various people from various countries are involved in this ... I will not be available by any means, phone or internet, for a week, so please don't worry."

Yesterday the Ahmed family's lawyer in Bangalore, BT Venkatesh, said that they were all "very upset" and still clinging on to the hope that it was not their son who had been involved in the terrible events in Britain. "As long as there is no confirmation from the British authorities, there is hope," he said. "But after that, what will happen will happen."