Here is the original NYT article from which the British article quotes: http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/08/08/news/diary.php#
Jihadist's self-portrait: Alone and seething <outbind://211/cgi-bin/search.cgi?query=By David Rohde and Mohammed Khan&sort=swishrank> By David Rohde and Mohammed Khan The New York Times <http://www.iht.com/images/article/spacer.gif> TUESDAY, AUGUST 9, 2005 <http://www.iht.com/images/icon/null.gif> <http://www.iht.com/images/icon/null.gif> <http://www.iht.com/images/icon/null.gif> <http://www.iht.com/cgi-bin/search.cgi?query=ISLAMABAD, Pakistan&sort=swishrank> ISLAMABAD, Pakistan In a small house outside the city of Peshawar in northwestern Pakistan, a 25-year-old man from the suburbs of London chronicled his personal holy war in the pages of a diary. March 10, 2005. "All alone in a strange land," he writes. "I can trust no-one except Allah." March 26. Questions how fellow Muslims can live peacefully in London when the "kufr," or unbelievers, have turned every corner of the globe into "a battlefield for the Muslims." Calls London the "vital organ of the minions of the devil." April 5. Vows to make "an all out immense effort" to "rejoin my contingent." What specific operation the man, Zeeshan Siddique, was preparing for is unclear. One month later, Pakistan security forces arrested him at the house after receiving reports that he was acting suspiciously. Inside, according to a Pakistani security official, investigators found an electrical circuit that could be used as a bomb detonator; a desktop computer that contained aeronautical mapping and other programs; and the cryptic 35-page diary, typed in English, with nearly daily entries from March 2 to April 6, 2005. The Pakistani official said he believed that Siddique was waiting to be dispatched as a suicide bomber. Phone numbers found with Siddique have been traced to known members of Al Qaeda, as well as British extremists involved in a failed plot to detonate bombs in London in 2004, the investigator said. The British police are also investigating whether Siddique, who was raised in Britain, had ties to the terrorist attacks in London on July 7, officials said. In particular, they are trying to determine whether a diary entry on March 13, in which Siddique says he has learned that "wagon is now called off," refers to the July 7 bombing plot. Siddique denies having played any role in the failed 2004 plot or the recent London attacks, according to the Pakistani security official. Still, his diary offers a chilling, if fragmented, self-portrait of a young Muslim man not only disaffected with Western society, but with other Muslims unwilling to join in jihad. Printed on sheets of paper from Siddique's computer printer, and mostly in capital letters, its 35 pages are sprinkled with British slang, profanities and verses from the Koran. Entries from the diary were shared with The New York Times by a Pakistani security official who insisted on anonymity because of the sensitivity of the investigation. Across the top of its first page is a quote from the Koran: "The greatest tests are truly to be soon alleviated." Based on the diary entries, he quickly grew uncomfortable, even contemptuous, of those around him after arriving at the house near Peshawar in early March. "I can't live in filth unlike u animals" he writes on March 8, calling a group of Pakistani neighbors "dirty geezers" and a Pakistani store owner a "monkey con artist." He suffers bouts of diarrhea and is unhappy with his hideaway, which has no running water. In the same entry he also notes that a person he contacted over the Internet "seemed 2 be chickening out." He fears he is being "conned," and is running out of money. On March 10 he complains of isolation and not speaking the local language. "Im constantly laughed at & ridiculed," he writes. Siddique has told investigators that he is from the London suburb of Hounslow and is a Muslim of Indian descent. Efforts to locate his family in Hounslow were unsuccessful. The only traces of his former life are school records and a single clipping from a Hounslow area newspaper. The article, from November 1997, quotes the police as saying that Siddique, 17 years old at the time, "ran off to join the mujahedeen" in Lebanon. He returned to his "frantic parents" one month later, the article says. It says he suffered from "a depressive illness." After the British press reported his possible link to the London bombings last month, officials in Hounslow issued a statement saying he was an "ordinary, average" student at Cranford Community College there from September 1992 to July 1997. But officials also say they believe that he befriended another student at Cranford, Asid Muhammad Hanif, who blew himself up in the suicide bombing of a Tel Aviv nightclub in 2003. "We think they were friends," said Philip Sutcliffe, a Hounslow government spokesman. Siddique has told interrogators that he first traveled to Pakistan in February 2003 with a British Muslim who was one of eight men later arrested in connection with the failed 2004 London bombing plot. He also said he had spent two and a half months in Lahore, Pakistan, with Mohammed Junaid Babar, a Pakistani-American computer programmer from New York City, according to the Pakistani security official. Babar pleaded guilty last year to charges of supplying military equipment to a Qaeda training camp in Pakistan and working to aid the failed 2004 London plot. While denying involvement in the two plots, Siddique has told interrogators that he spent the past two years fighting in Afghanistan and Kashmir. His diary offers little sense of what initially drove him to extremism, but abounds with examples of how he views the world through a radical lens. He rails about Pakistanis who "claim 2 b Muslim" but "don't get it thru there thik heads" that it is their "fard," or religious duty, to help him wage his holy war. On March 11, he visits people whom he identifies by code name and learns "bad news." "The relaxing place was done over," he writes, and "7-8 of the guys taken whilst asleep." "Told guys need 2 make a move soon," he writes. "Cant stik round." On March 15 Siddique is told "the situation is really bad" and he should "just sit tight & wait it out until things get a bit better." Over the next week he gardens, listens to BBC radio news broadcasts and rejoices at the death of "Yankee pigs" in Iraq and Afghanistan. He sees himself as a valiant defender of a faith under siege. "Indeed the kafrs do possess everything at the moment but for how long," he writes on March 23. "Indeed the armies of Islam are coming." On April 5 he complains about endless news coverage of the death of Pope John Paul II and predicts that "Allah will throw him in hell." On April 6 he celebrates the deaths of Prince Rainier III of Monaco and the American Nobel laureate Saul Bellow, whom he called a "Jew boy writer friend of Herzl," apparently a reference to Theodor Herzl, the founder of the Zionist political movement, who died in 1904. "Excellent news," he writes. "May Allah curse them." He seethes the most at Muslims he sees as aiding the West, calling them hypocrites. Pakistan's president, General Pervez Musharraf, is "iblis," or Satan. Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari of Iraq is "the dog of the hell fire." When his spirits flag, he bolsters his morale by watching "vids," apparently videos or DVDs from the "bros," or brothers, in Iraq. Siddique has told interrogators that he misses his parents in Britain, according to the Pakistani security official. But he believes that the only way he can spend eternity with them is by becoming a martyr. "Do not waver or become weak," he writes in one of his last diary entries. "This is the only way I can be reunited with Mummy and Daddy." David Rohde reported from Islamabad for this article, and Mohammed Khan from Peshawar. Diary of British jihadi' unearthed in Pakistan By Sam Knight, Times Online http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,22989-1726730,00.html A diary that purports to reflect the anger, boredom and loneliness of a young British Muslim who wanted to wage holy war has been found in Pakistan, according to The New York Times. The newspaper claims in today's edition that the 35-page type-written diary of Zeeshan Siddique was found in a small house outside the city of Peshawar in north west Pakistan, where Mr Siddique, a 25-year-old man from Hounslow, West London, was reportedly arrested by Pakistani security officials on May 18. The near daily entries in the document are short and bitter. On March 10, 2005, the writer confides: "All alone in a strange land... I can trust no-one except Allah," according to the newspaper. Two weeks later, the diary wonders how Muslims can live in London, the "vital organ of the minions of the devil", now that the "kufr," or unbelievers, have transformed the world into "a battlefield for the Muslims." In the more cryptic extracts, the diary refers to "the guys" and "the wagon" and "the relaxing place", passages which Pakistani security officials have reportedly told The New York Times may refer to other extremists and plans for terror attacks. On March 11, for instance, the writer apparently visited friends and learned "bad news." "The relaxing place was done over," he wrote, and "7-8 of the guys taken whilst asleep." "Told guys need 2 make a move soon," he added. "Cant stik round." Then, just four days later, the diarist was told that "the situation is really bad" and that he should "just sit tight & wait it out until things get a bit better". Frustration appears to grip the writer. On April 5, typing in block capitals, he vows to undertake "an all out immense effort" to "rejoin my contingent". According to The New York Times - which quoted Pakistani security officials involved in the investigation into ties between Pakistani militants and the July 7 bombings in London - Mr Siddique is being held because of suspected contact between him and an al-Qaeda member. Pakistani security sources say that he has told his interrogators that he first travelled to Pakistan in February 2003, with a man later arrested for involvement in a failed terror plot against London in 2004, the paper reports. He claimed to have spent the last two years fighting in Afghanistan and Kashmir, says The New York Times. As a schoolboy growing up in West London, Mr Siddique attended Cranford Community College. The Times revealed last month that at Cranford he knew Asif Hanif, the 21-year-old Londoner who became Britain's first known suicide bomber when he blew himself up in a bar in Tel Aviv in April 2003. Officials in Hounslow say that Mr Siddique was an "ordinary, average" student at Cranford from 1992 to 1997. The statement confirms that he and Asif Hanif knew each other. "We think they were friends," said Philip Sutcliffe, a Hounslow spokesman quoted by The New York Times. As well as venting his anger against America, London and those Pakistanis who "claim 2 b Muslim" but "don't get it thru there thik heads" that it is their "fard", or religious duty, to wage jihad, the writer also uses the diary to complain about his new neighbours in Pakistan. "I can't live in filth unlike u animals" he wrote on March 8, according to today's article. The writer refers to his neighbours in Peshawar as "dirty geezers". And in his diary, a local shop owner became, in language that is more Hounslow than Hadith: a "monkey con artist". He suffers bouts of diarrhea and is unhappy that his hideout has no running water. The diary also offers a glimpse into the tedium of a life lived in remote Pakistan. According to the extracts seen by The New York Times reporter, the writer seems to have filled his time gardening and listening to the BBC World Service. On April 5, for instance, he complained about the heavy coverage of the death of Pope John Paul II and wrote: "Allah will throw him in hell". He rejoices at the death of British and American troops in Iraq, calling them "Yankee pigs", and when he hears that Prince Rainier of Monaco and the US author Saul Bellow have died he writes: "Excellent news. May Allah curse them." The New York Times reports that he describes Bellow as a "Jew boy writer friend of Herzl" - referring to Theodor Herzl, the founder of the Zionist political movement, who died in 1904. The writer's worst bile is reserved for Muslim leaders whom he sees as collaborating with the West. General Pervez Musharraf, the President of Pakistan, is described as "Satan", while the diary reportedly refers to the Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari as "the dog of the hell fire". The newspaper quotes its sources in Pakistan as saying that the diarist misses his parents in London. He drives himself to his jihadist's goal with the hope of rejoining them one day. "Do not waver or become weak," he writes in one of his final diary entries. "This is the only way I can be reunited with Mummy and Daddy." [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! 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