Respected in community, bomb suspect hid turmoil

LEEDS, England -- Jason Giles, an 11-year-old with behavioral problems, burst out of class at the Hillside Primary School one day last fall and just started running. As teachers debated what to do, one of their aides, Mohammed Sidique Khan, climbed into his car and gave chase, not only finding the troubled boy, but calming him down and returning him to school.

''Mr. Khan had a good way with the kids, very dedicated," said Jason's father, Tommy Giles, standing outside his townhouse near the school. ''He seemed like a nice bloke."

Last week, Khan got into his car again, but this time he was not on a mission to help someone. Police say he and at least two young men from Leeds who looked up to him headed south to Luton, about 30 miles north of London, where they and a fourth accomplice boarded a train that took them to King's Cross station in London.

From there, police say, Kahn and the others, each carrying backpacks with high explosives, went their separate ways and carried out a series of suicide attacks on three subway trains and a double-decker bus that left more than 50 people dead.

Police suspect Khan, 30, was the leader of the radical Islamic cell that emerged from this sleepy old industrial city in northern England not known for producing militant Muslims. They believe he detonated the bomb that ripped through a train near the Edgware Road station.

Khan was a much-respected teacher's aide who worked with special needs students and ran a breakfast program for poor children. He married into a prominent family; his mother-in-law was honored by Queen Elizabeth II for her charitable work. He was the father of a young daughter and had another child on the way.

Yet, in his last months, the reality of Khan's life belied the calm exterior he exhibited, according to neighbors. He and his pregnant wife separated. In December, he left his job at the school, telling co-workers and his students that he had to return to Pakistan to tend to his dying father.

In fact, police suspect, Khan at some point had become the leading member of a locally recruited group of men of Pakistani descent who were preparing to carry out the first suicide attack in Western Europe. He taught martial arts at a Leeds community center called Hamara, which means ''Ours" in Urdu, an official language of Pakistan. Among his students were Shehzad Tanweer, 22, and Hasib Hussain, 18, who police say were his accomplices in the bombings. Khan also worked at a stall that sold Islamic books, and the two visited him there, local residents said.

Police are still operating on the theory that someone from outside Leeds recruited Khan and the others to carry out the bombings. But there is increasing anecdotal evidence that Khan was the leader of the local end of the plot, and that he may have recommended or chosen his proteges for the suicide mission.

Maroof Latif, 32, who grew up with Khan in the Beeston section of Leeds and whose two sons are students at Hillside, said Khan came from ''a very good family."

''He was very religious, but he was not an extremist," Latif said.

He said Khan's wife, Hasina Patel, came from a prominent Indian family. While marriages between Pakistani and Indian families are not common, Latif said the Patels were also Muslims, from the state of Gujarat. Last year, after Khan and his wife had their first child, they moved from cramped, working-class Beeston to his wife's hometown of Dewsbury, a middle-class suburb about 10 miles south of Leeds.

They had more space, in a semidetatched house on a quiet cul-de-sac with a grassy backyard. But the marriage was troubled. Neighbors recall Hasina Patel as an elegant woman who seemed more secular than her husband.

Charlene McTighe, a 12-year-old neighbor of Khan and his wife, said men often visited their home wearing the flowing robes of the devoutly Muslim. She remembers a man whose accent sounded Jamaican visited recently.

''He was Jamaican, but he was dressed like a Muslim," she said, pausing while taking her 5-month-old brother Aram for a walk in his stroller. She said she saw the man in the neighborhood the day before the attacks in London.

British media yesterday identified the fourth bomber as Lindsey Germaine, a 33-year-old Briton of Jamaican descent.

Khan's devout companions apparently created tension in the home, and neighbors said he and his wife had separated. They didn't know where he had been living.

Latif, his childhood friend, said Khan had a large, extended family in the Leeds area and no shortage of places to stay. Khan's wife moved out of their home shortly after the attacks, neighbors said, and could not be located yesterday.

Khan's wife, who works with disabled children, helped get him a job at Hillside as a learning mentor, who counsels troubled students and helps immigrant children settle into the British school system.

In a 2002 interview with The Times of London for a story in the newspaper's educational supplement, Khan spoke critically of the poverty in Beeston. He said the immigrant children he worked with were oblivious to the disadvantages at Hillside compared to most British schools.

''A lot of them have said this is the best school they have been to," he told the newspaper.

Hillside serves mostly poor children, with one of the highest turnover rates in West Yorkshire. Khan was popular with students and their parents, who were disappointed when Khan abruptly left Hillside in December.

It is unclear whether he actually went to Pakistan, but friends and relatives of Tanweer and Hussain said both of them had visited Pakistan for extended periods in the last two years. Tanweer studied at a madrassa, and Hussain visited family and returned far more religious than when he left, they said.

Metropolitan Police antiterrorist branch detectives have been dispatched to Pakistan to follow up that end of the investigation, according to police officials.

Tommy Giles said Khan had taken a special interest in his troubled son.

''My son had a lot of anger in him," Giles said, explaining that he and his wife had split up. ''Mr. Khan could talk to him, to get the anger out of him."

He said Khan had encouraged the boy to take martial arts training with him at the Hamara center. ''He thought that would help Jason, to get his anger out of his system, but Jason never did it," Giles said.

Giles kept his son home from school yesterday and won't let him go back until the police search the premises for explosives -- something the police have so far not done. Instead, a few blocks away, police evacuated the Greenmount Primary School and surrounding houses as they searched a residence for explosives.

Giles said he is as shocked by the complacency of others at the school as he is by the allegations of Khan's secret double life.

''If he'd kill a bunch of innocent people, and leave his wife and child behind," Giles said, ''wouldn't you think he'd leave some bombs in a school?"