Final moments of Britain's first suicide bomber
Times On Line ^ | September 6, 2006 | Daniel McGrory
timesonline.co.uk
DETAILS of the desperate attempts by Britain’s first suicide bomber to escape after he bungled an attack on a bar in Tel Aviv were disclosed yesterday at an inquest.
Until now rival intelligence agencies and the family of Omar Khan Sharif, 27, from Derby, have argued over how he died after his body was found washed up on a beach.
Islamic militants claimed that Israeli secret agents captured then murdered him. But Israeli authorities deny the accusation, claiming that Sharif was probably killed by the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, which used him and another British-born Islamic student to carry out the bombing in April 2003.
Western security chiefs believe that Sharif killed himself after failing in his martyrdom mission, but his family have complained of a cover-up.
Yesterday a coroner in Derby said that it would never be known for certain how Sharif had ended up in the sea after his failed attack.
Bystanders who tried to seize Sharif told an inquest how the former public schoolboy fought off one man who held a knife to his throat. He fled and managed to evade a huge police hunt.
Sharif and Asif Hanif, 21, from Hounslow, West London, targeted Mike’s Place, a seafront bar close to the US Embassy. The idea was for them to become the first British-born suicide attackers.
The inquest in Derby was told how Hanif forced his way past security guards and detonated his explosives, killing himself and three others and wounding 65 people in the packed bar. Sharif fled after only the detonator on his bomb, strapped round his waist, went off.
Both men had made a martyrdom video before the attack boasting that it was “an honour to kill all these people”. |
