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Iraq war at root of Bilal’s fury

LA Times-Washington Post

Posted online: Saturday, July 07, 2007 at 0000 hrs

LONDON, July 6: Bilal Abdulla, one of the two doctors arrested after a blazing Jeep Cherokee rammed into the Glasgow Airport terminal on Saturday, is a deeply religious Iraqi who was angry that his prominent Sunni family “lost everything” after the 2003 invasion led by the United States and Britain, according to a close family member.

“He was hurt by the destruction of his family’s property in Iraq,” the relative said during a 2 1/2-hour interview in Cambridge, England. “I think he wanted to be a martyr. He wanted to send out a message to withdraw troops from Iraq. He wanted to cause chaos and fear; he didn’t want to kill people. He fears God, and all he wanted to do was die.”

The relative, who said he had seen Abdulla frequently, spoke on condition of anonymity.

The Glasgow-area suburban home where Abdulla reportedly lived, and where neighbours reported seeing a Jeep Cherokee, has been sealed off by police. British media have reported that police suspect the failed car bombs may have been assembled there.

Colleagues at Royal Alexandra Hospital, where Abdulla and Kafeel Ahmed, the Jeep’s driver worked, have said Abdulla, who earned his medical degree in Baghdad in 2004, had been warned at the hospital that he was spending too much time perusing Arabic-language portal.

Abdulla entered the medical profession reluctantly, pressured by his father, a professor of orthopaedic medicine in Iraq, the relative said. “His heart was not in it,” the relative said. “He passed because his father was a well-known professor.”

The relative said Abdulla was the oldest son of an “important Sunni family” that thrived during the rule of Saddam Hussein, although Abdulla didn’t like Saddam. Abdulla’s mother is a pharmacist, and he has a brother who is a doctor and a sister who is a pharmacist.

Abdulla (27), was born in England when his father was studying medicine at a British university. The family moved back to Baghdad when Abdulla was 2, and he grew up extremely religious.

“He memorised the Koran when he was a small boy,” the relative said. “I remember once during Ramadan, he would lock the door and for 10 days, he read and prayed, read and prayed, and that’s all.”

Abdulla quit medical school in Baghdad and returned to England in 2000, the relative said. He spent a lot of time at the Cambridge Muslim Welfare Society mosque, not far from the university.

Abdulla went back to Iraq and was there when US and British troops invaded in March 2003. The fortunes of his family changed dramatically. Several houses they owned were destroyed in fighting, and tenants stopped paying rent. The country’s majority Shiite population rose to prominence.

The relative’s account matches a description by Shiraz Maher, a friend who remembered Abdulla from Cambridge when they both lived there. Writing in the New Statesman magazine, Maher described Abdulla as a “humble and polite” man who “developed a vitriolic hatred for the Shiites after a close friend at university in Iraq was killed by a Shiite militiaman.”

A media report on Friday said Abdulla had disappeared for a year during his medical training in Baghdad, during which he is thought to have visited Pakistan or Lebanon.

A friend who attended the Medical College of Baghdad University with Abdulla said: “There was some talk that he went outside Iraq to develop his religious culture. I heard he went to Lebanon or Pakistan.”

On his return, Abdulla became far more intense and isolated himself from his former friends. “He became more radical, but not to the degree that he took part in actual actions or clashes. He kept silent,” the friend said.

Abdulla completed his medical degree and returned to England in 2004, the relative said. He followed news from Iraq “intensely over the Internet,” said the relative.

http://www.indianexpress.com/story/204054.html

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