Few of the deadliest modern-day suicide bombers fit the stereotype of a mass murderer. Here’s a look at four once-average people who epitomize the changing profile of the terrorists we fear most.
Shehzad Tanweer
Country of birth: Britain
Age: 22
Mission: Suicide bombing in London
Background: Acquaintances remember Tanweer, born in Bradford and raised in Leeds, as an excellent cricket player in his youth. He attended university and worked at his family’s fish and chips shop. He was likely radicalized on a trip to an Islamic study camp in Pakistan in early 2005, according to reports. Just months after returning, Tanweer and three other men detonated bombs aboard three trains in the London Underground and aboard a central London bus, killing 52 people and wounding more than 700 others.
Why he matters: The London bombings Tanweer and his cohorts carried out were the first suicide attacks on British soil. Tanweer epitomizes the threat of “clean-skin” operatives, authorities say. He was an A-student and a gifted athlete with many friends. Tanweer had no history of violence or run-ins with police. His family described him as “proud to be British.”
Virginie Lefour/AFP/Getty Images
Muriel Degauque
Country of birth: Belgium
Age: 38
Mission: Suicide bombing in Baquba, Iraq
Background: Friends remember Degauque, born a Catholic in the sleepy Belgian town of Charleroi, as an average student who was well-dressed and well-mannered. She converted to Islam after struggling to break addictions to alcohol and drugs. Her religious beliefs reportedly became radicalized after she married a Belgian Muslim who was known to local authorities as an extremist. Traveling to Iraq via Syria in 2005, Degauque died on November 9 of that year when she carried out a suicide bombing attack against a U.S. military patrol.
Why she matters: Terrorism experts believe Degauque was the first European Muslim woman to execute a suicide attack. European women who marry Muslim men are now the largest source of religious conversions in Europe, and European counterterrorism officials are increasingly concerned that female converts represent a small but potentially deadly element of the terrorist threat in Europe.
Ahmed Said Ahmed al-Ghamdi
Country of birth: Saudi Arabia
Age: 20
Mission: Suicide bombing in Mosul, Iraq
Background: Acquaintances describe Ghamdi as well-mannered and polite. He studied medicine in the Sudan, where his father was a diplomat at the Saudi embassy. While there, Ghamdi began to show signs of increasing Islamic devotion, growing a beard and studying the Koran intensely. He was recruited by the Northern Iraq-based insurgent group Ansar al-Sunna and on Dec. 21, 2004, Ghamdi used an explosive vest to detonate himself inside a mess hall at a U.S. military base in Mosul. The attack killed 22 people and wounded 60 others. It was the single largest loss of American life ever on a U.S. military base.
Why he matters: Ghamdi’s radicalization is notable because he was smart, well-connected in Riyadh, and had excellent career prospects. Raised within the Saudi upper class, he represents the higher end of the intelligence scale among Middle Eastern youth, a group not traditionally thought of as a hotbed for terrorist recruiting. But his eventual turn to terror perhaps should not have come as a surprise. Three members of the Ghamdi clan were among the 9/11 highjackers.
Kafeel Ahmed
Country of birth: India
Age: 27
Mission: Attempted suicide bombing in Scotland
Background: Ahmed was born in Bangalore, India, and raised in Saudi Arabia and Iran, where his parents worked as doctors. He trained as an engineer at a university back in India before pursuing master’s and doctoral degrees in Britain. Ahmed worked for a blue-chip Indian outsourcing company in 2005–06 that serviced clients in the aeronautics industry, including Boeing and Airbus. On June 30, 2007, Ahmed and a companion crashed a Jeep full of propane canisters into Glasgow’s airport. Ahmed survived the attack but later died of burns.
Why he matters: The first terrorist attack in Scotland since the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, Ahmed’s case shows how new technologies are helping to recruit the next generation of terrorists. Authorities believe he was radicalized in Islamist chatrooms, where he followed events in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Palestine closely. He was fond of downloading speeches delivered by Osama bin Laden, yet he showed little interest in Islamist causes in India. It was also on jihadist Internet sites that Ahmed downloaded hundreds of bomb designs.
