Failed bomber Kafeel Ahmed was interested in Jihadi literature

Kafeel Ahmed, the Bangalore-born engineer who was the face of the foiled terrorist attack in Glasgow in June this year, may have been a shy and nervous student, but was interested in Jihad literature and the plight of the Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan and Chechnya.This conclusion has been arrived at after police examined his computer and CDs seized from his house in Bangalores Banashankari area, reports The Scotsman.

Edinburgh, Aug.4 : Kafeel Ahmed, the Bangalore-born engineer who was the face of the foiled terrorist attack in Glasgow in June this year, may have been a shy and nervous student, but was interested in Jihad literature and the plight of the Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan and Chechnya.This conclusion has been arrived at after police examined his computer and CDs seized from his house in Bangalore's Banashankari area, reports The Scotsman.

Police are now examining and analysing his telephone records, his e-mails, besides scrutinising the contents of the burnt out Jeep used in the June 30 Glasgow Airport bombing.

A search for clues is also on at his house in Houston where he allegedly prepared the improvised bombs.

Kafeel, who died 33 days after the Glasgow airport attack, hardly moved when his body was engulfed in flames on the morning of June 30, says a police official.

"He was well ablaze - clothing, hair, skin - and from the attitude that he was in, lying on his back, there was a kind of resignation about him," Constable Ferguson recalled.

The son of Maqbool Ahmed and his wife, Zakhia, both doctors, he was raised in a home in the wealthy Banashankari area of Bangalore, south-eastern India. His parents have now retired after closing down a nursing home they ran for several years.

Kafeel and his brother, Sabeel, were born in Saudi Arabia, where their parents worked for a few years.

Kafeel was revealed to be a doctor, but of engineering, not medicine, and possessed the knowledge with which to construct explosive devices. He initially obtained a degree in engineering at a college in Davangere, about 300 miles north-west of Bangalore.

Fellow students remembered him as a nervous young man, painfully shy, and who rarely mentioned religion, but wept when mocked.

"He was always very nervous during that time and once or twice he even started crying,'' said KV Arun, a former classmate. "But no-one can deny that he was brilliant.''

Ahmed provided false information for admission to the college, stating he was a Hindu rather than a Muslim.

His college record shows he ranked fifth in a graduating class of nearly 400, earning a degree in mechanical engineering in 2000. He then travelled to Belfast where he completed a master of philosophy degree in aeronautical engineering at Queen's University in 2003.

He later specialised for a doctorate in computational fluid dynamics, gained at Anglia Polytechnic University, later renamed Anglia Ruskin University, in Cambridge. A complex subject involves using computers to simulate the flow of fluids and gases over structures.

Professor Derek Sheldon believes that Kafeel may have been radicalised in recent times.

During Ahmed's time in Belfast, where he lived in Hampton Place between 2001 and 2004, he was a member of the Islamic Student Society of Northern Ireland.

ANI