Blair Caught Behind the Wicket

British boy wrongly labelled as London bomber
Dawn Monitor
AN INTERVIEW of a British teenager broadcast on a Pakistani television network has thrown into doubt investigators’ claims that all the three London bombers of Pakistani descent visited Pakistan last year. According to the investigators, the three bombers had died in the July 7 attacks.
But 16-year-old Hasib Hussain, a namesake of one of the putative bombers and of Pakistani descent, said in the interview that a photograph of a passport purporting to show bomber Hasib Hussain, 19, was his, and not that of the ‘bomber’. The photo, together with documents showing that Hasib and two other bombers visited Pakistan last year, was published in newspapers on Monday. “I first saw my photograph on Channel 4 [British TV network) and I was terrified,” Hasib Hussain, the teenager said in the interview with the ARY network on Thursday. “I didn’t want people looking at me saying ‘hey, you are supposed to be dead’,” he said, “or someone saying that there goes the London bomber.”
On Monday, Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) said Hasib Hussain, carrying a British passport, had arrived in Karachi from Riyadh on July 15 last year. The father of Hasib (the interviewee) said that the family had indeed visited Karachi last year. He urged the British and Pakistani authorities to clear up the confusion. An FIA official told the BBC: “We have nothing to say on the matter at this stage.” —BBC