Family of Hindu Al-Qaeda Convert Shunned

[Guest guest]

LONDON November 8, 2006): The Hindu family of an al-Qaeda terrorist —

Dhiren Barot of Indian origin — who later converted to Islam and has

been convicted of plotting to bomb the UK and the US, has become

virtually "untouchable" to the rest of the Hindu community for the

sins of their son.

 

The unfortunate Barots, because of the act of their son, have been

completely isolated by their community, many refusing to speak to

them because their son has converted to Islam. Even worse, he became

an extremist bent on destruction.

 

Last week his family home in Kingsbury, North London, was decorated

with red symbols for Diwali. But no one from the Hindu community

visited them. Barot was born in India and brought up in a north

London suburb by middle class parents.

 

He left home at 20 after secretly converting to Islam and only

returned when his father had a heart operation several years later.

By then he had grown a beard and his father told him: "Shave it off,

you look like a Muslim."

 

"I had dreams for him. I wanted to buy him a house, I wanted him to

get married and have children," his father told friends

recently. "That won't happen now and I don't think I'll even see him

again."

 

Barot was born in Baroda in the Indian state of Gujarat, the son of

a banker from Nairobi, and an Indian mother. His parents fled the

worsening political situation for Asians in Kenya in 1972, when

Dhiren was a year old.

 

After school, Barot worked for many travel agencies and hotels

before becoming an airline ticket clerk for Air Malta in Piccadilly,

London, in 1991. After four years he flew to Pakistan and then

Kashmir. In Kashmir he allegedly took weapons and explosives

training. After Kashmir he moved to Afghanistan where he spent a

year working as a trainer in one of the camps of Islamic fighters.

 

According to a media report, during this time he met Khalid Sheikh

Mohammed, the mastermind behind the September 11 attacks, and got

involved with al-Qaeda. He had the nicknames Esa al-Britani and Esa

al-Hindi.

 

A judge sentenced Dhiren Barot on Tuesday to life in prison in a

trans-Atlantic plot to bomb the New York Stock Exchange, the World

Bank and landmark London hotels.

 

Judge Neil Butterfield denounced Dhiren Barot's plot to "slaughter

hundreds, if not thousands, of wholly innocent men, women and

children," and called the plan sophisticated, deadly and active.

 

Seven others linked to Barot are to be tried in Britain next year.

Barot's sentence provides for the possibility of parole after 40

years. "You have chosen to use your life to bring death and

destruction to the Western world," Butterfield told Barot, who

stared blankly as he heard the sentence. "You were planning to bring

indiscriminate carnage, bloodshed and butchery ... on an

unprecedented scale."

 

SOURCE: The News International, Karachi, Pakistan

URL: http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=4088