Kate O'Hara and
Lizzie Murphy
INVESTIGATORS believe school assistant Mohammad Sidique Khan was the key figure who recruited the others to carry out the London suicide bombings, the Yorkshire Post has learned.
Sources yesterday confirmed Khan, from Dewsbury, appeared to have played a key role in encouraging the others to take part. Police inquiries in Beeston, Leeds, had revealed a so-called "Mr K".
Khan, 30, a former learning mentor at Hillside Primary School, Beeston, was the oldest of the four suicide bombers who struck last week and was carrying the bomb that blew up the Tube train at Edgware Road.
The age gap between him and the others, in their teens and early 20s, has also led police to look at whether he had a guiding role.
A police source told the Yorkshire Post: "He was probably the recruiting force. He is believed to have been the one who has drawn the
others in."
The father of Hasib Hussain, the 18-year-old bus bomber from Colenso Mount, Beeston, is reported to have been upset by the influence "Mr K" wielded over his son.
Mahmoud Hussain is understood to have said his son had become radicalised under his influence and said he had developed two religions, Muslim and another kind of Muslim. Police are also believed to have found that the name "Mr K" kept appearing.
Yesterday Nadeem Javeed, 33, of Harehiills, Leeds, told the Yorkshire Post Khan had involved Hussain and Shazad Tanweer, 22 – another of the bombers – in youth projects in Beeston.
He had brought the teenagers to Hardy Street Mosque, where one of the projects was run to keep young people off the streets.
The gym in its basement was used as a meeting place and Mr Javeed said among other activities Khan helped young people with self-defence and weights. He also helped them with maths.
He said: "He was interested in helping the community, getting people off drugs and eradicating the problems of society."
Mr Javeed said he had known Mohammed Khan for 10 years and a group of them had started to run youth projects in Leeds which later developed into the project at Hardy Street Mosque.
He added: "He was very calm and quite quiet but he liked to help others. We used to take the kids to play football and cricket and we also went to Alton Towers now and again.
"We saw the hypocrisy in the Middle East and the policies of Western government in Middle Eastern countries although we didn't talk about it much.
"It was a huge shock when I found out what he had done. It is definitely wrong what he has done but they were expressing an opinion."
The three had been banned from the Hardy Street mosque for their radical preaching and so instead met at a local centre. Yesterday it also emerged they had been banned from mosques across the Beeston area.
Razaq Raj, a senior lecturer at Leeds Metropolitan University, said: "I know the three mosques in Beeston had banned them – the ones in Stratford Street, Hardy Street and Tunstall Road. I know this, but I don't know why. It could be for all sorts of reasons."
Mr Javeed said he last saw Khan four or five months ago at the Hardy Street mosque. That was a few months after he moved from Beeston to the Lees Holm, Dewsbury, house that police raided earlier this week.
An acquaintance of Khan has told how he had travelled extensively overseas, especially in Asia, and regularly visited Afghanistan for military-style training.
He said he informed police last weekend of his concern that he may be indoctrinating younger people with whom he worked.