Witness was unwitting helper with 21/7 purchase

Sean O’Neill

One of the alleged 21/7 bombers had condemned the 7/7 suicide attacks just days before he boarded an Underground train with an explosive device in his rucksack, a court was told yesterday.

Yassin Omar, who is accused of attempting to detonate a bomb on the Victoria Line at Warren Street, was described by a close friend as a devout Muslim who performed spontaneous acts of charity.

Matthew Dixon told Woolwich Crown Court that he was shocked to discover that the man he had known for ten years could have been involved in the attacks on three Underground trains and a London bus.

Mr Dixon, 26, a product designer, said that he had heard Mr Omar condemn the suicide bombings on July 7, 2005, in which 52 innocent people died.

“Yassin always said the whole idea of Islam is to bring people to it,” said Mr Dixon. “He has always been a strong believer that these kinds of attacks on innocent people are not achieving anything — you are just alienating people from the religion.”

After seeing CCTV images of the alleged bombers in the aftermath of the incidents on July 21, Mr Dixon had joined Mr Omar’s friends and family in a search for him.

He spoke to Mr Omar’s tearful wife, who had been married to the alleged bomber for just four days. She told Mr Dixon: “How could he do this? We have just got married.”

Mr Dixon told the court that he was equally confused. He said: “If somebody wanted to get married, why would they want to do this? It didn’t ring true, it didn’t make sense.”

Mr Dixon was giving evidence at the start of the second week of the trial in which Mr Omar, 26, Muktah Said Ibrahim, 28, Manfo Kwaku Asiedu, 33, Adel Yahya, 24, Ramzi Mohammed, 25, and Hussein Osman, 28, deny charges of conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to cause explosions.

He said that he met Mr Omar, a Somali refugee who lived with foster parents until he was 18, when they went to the same school in North London. Mr Dixon said that he spent a lot of time at Mr Omar’s flat at Curtis House, New Southgate — the plotters’ alleged bomb factory — where they watched television, played video games and “chilled out”.

Through Mr Omar he met Mr Yahya, Mr Ibrahim and Mr Asiedu and, for a while, took an interest in the Muslim religion. Mr Omar had become increasingly interested in Islam after leaving school and Mr Dixon said that he accompanied him several times on visits to mosques, including the Finsbury Park mosque where Abu Hamza al-Masri was the imam.

Mr Dixon said: “It sounds corny but when you see people actively practising it, being kind to others, it’s quite uplifting. It was quite appealing.”

He said that Mr Omar had offered a bed to a mentally ill African refugee, took in a homeless Indian man and paid visits to people in hospital. He never heard Mr Omar speak out in support of any act of terrorism.Mr Dixon said: “He was against the Iraq war, but . . . he said nothing radical.” Mr Dixon became an unwitting helper of the alleged conspirators when he accompanied Mr Asiedu on a trip to buy dozens of litres of hydrogen peroxide, the chemical that formed the key ingredient of the rucksack bombs.

On May 19, 2005, Mr Dixon drove Mr Asiedu — whom he knew as Ismael — to two hairdressing supply shops where they bought high-strength bottles of peroxide and took them to Mr Omar’s flat. Mr Dixon said that he had been told that Mr Asiedu, a decorator, wanted the powerful chemical to strip thick layers of wallpaper from the walls of listed buildings.

In the days after 21/7, as he searched for Mr Omar, he contacted Mr Asiedu and met him at Finchley mosque.

Mr Asiedu made no mention of his alleged role in the conspiracy or that he had allegedly lost his nerve and abandoned a fifth bomb in a West London park. Mr Dixon said: “I mentioned the (CCTV) picture of Yassin. Ismael (Asiedu) said he was so shocked, he couldn’t believe it. He was out of sorts, I just thought it was the shock of the whole thing.”

Mr Dixon said that on July 24 he went to a police station and made the first of a number of statements.

The trial continues.