London: The wife of the Stockholm suicide
bomber said she had no idea he had become radicalised and was
plotting a terror attack, in an interview out Sunday.
Mona Thwany, 28, said her husband Taimour Abdulwahab
appeared to be a "normal Muslim" who "never revealed his
secret side" to her.
The 29-year-old sports therapist blew up himself and his
car in a busy Stockholm street on December 11. Two passers-by
were injured.
Thwany and Abdulwahab met at university in Luton, north
of London, had been married for six years and lived in the
factory town with their children aged six years, four years
and two months.
In his suicide message, he apologised to his family for
keeping his plot secret for four years.
"Taimour was a normal person, a normal Muslim. There were
no alarm bells," she told News of the World, Britain's
biggest-selling newspaper.
"He never revealed his secret side to me. Maybe it's a
cultural thing because as a Muslim wife I was not expected to
pry into his life."
Thwany denied reports that she radicalised him and said
she was "never aware" that a Luton mosque asked him to leave
because of his extreme views.
"Looking back, he did get more religious," she said.
"He was a practising Muslim, praying five times a day,
fasting at Ramadan and giving to charity. He distanced himself
from people around him. Fewer and fewer friends came to the
house.
"Then he lost contact with some of them altogether. He
began to spend a lot of time on the Internet. He became very
private."
She said the pair never discussed politics, though "he
was angry about the war in Iraq and Afghanistan -- but not
unduly so."
Abdulwahab's family fled from Iraq to Sweden in 1991.
Thwany is from Romania and has an Iraqi father.
Abdulwahab had told his wife he was going to Sweden to
see relatives and she "didn't notice anything different about
him" when he left on November 19.
"A normal kiss and a hug and he went," she said.
He sent her an MP3 sound file minutes before killing
himself but thinking it would be a song, she did not listen to
it. Only when Abdulwahab's sister called to alert her to the
news did she hear the recording -- his suicide message.
PTI
First Published: Sunday, January 02, 2011, 23:09