My Son, the 7/7 Suicide Bomber: A Father’s Anguish

On Thursday 7 July 2005, four bombs were detonated in London killing 52 people (including the bombers) and injuring a further 700. It was the first successful suicide bomb attack on British soil and the biggest terrorist atrocity since the 1988 Lockerbie bomb which brought down Pan Am flight 103. The four suicide bombers were named as Mohammed Sidique Khan, aged 30 of Beeston, Leeds; Shehzad Tanweer: aged 22 of Leeds; Germaine Lindsay: aged 19 from Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire and Hasib Hussain, 18, from Holbeck in Leeds. Hasib Hussain was my son.
In the immediate aftermath of the bombing there was much media attention focussed on Hasib’s father. Mahmood Hussain was a hardworking Pakistani immigrant who had lived and worked in Leeds for almost 30 years by the time of the bombing. He was as astonished as anyone else that his son was one of the first UK suicide bombers. he also reveals that it was his amateur detective work that tracked down the terror cell of which his son had been a part. Prior to him mentioning the names of the other two local men involved, the police had no idea what they were dealing with. Here he tells the story of Hasib’s upbringing and the facts behind many misreported aspects of Hasib’s brief life from his trips to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to his education and his discussions with his father, just days before the attack, about his future plans and marriage.