J7 Profile: Jamal/Jermaine Lindsay (Age: 19)

 

Jermaine Lindsay: Alleged to be responsible for the King's Cross / Russell Square blast

Lindsay's name has been reported in numerous variations:

Jermaine Lindsay, Lindsay Jermaine, Lindsay Jamal, Jermaine Morris Lindsay, Jermaine Maurice Lindsay, Germaine Morris Lindsay, Germaine Maurice Lindsay, Germaine Lindsay, Jamal Lindsay, Gemal Lindsay, Lyndsay Jermain, Lindsay Germail and Lindsay Germain.

Although all reports seem to agree that when he converted to Islam he changed his name to Abdullah Shaheed Jamal and his family and friends refer to him by the name Jamal.

Like the other suspects, the reports of Jamal and his background conflict wildly making it incredibly difficult to establish many lucid facts about his life but he was born in Jamaica on September 23rd 1985. Depending on which account is read, he was born in either Mandeville or Waterford.

Again, depending on which account is to be believed, he left the island to come to Britain at five months old or five years old. Jamal apparently barely knew his father Nigel Lindsay, who left his mother, Maryam McLeod Ismaiyl, shortly after he was born. In January 1986 they both left the island with the man who was to become Jamal’s stepfather, Barry Reid, and went to live in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire.

His mother became a probation officer and within a year had given birth to Jamal’s half-sister, Dana. Four years later, Maryam and Barry split and Dana went to live with her father, leaving Jamal and his mother alone, until she met another partner, with whom she had another daughter, Lauren.

Jamal grew up in the area of Dalton in Holays, attending Rawthorpe Junior, a church school and Rawthorpe High School where he was noted for his good grades and love of sports:

“Theresa Weldrick, who was in the year below at secondary school, said she was stunned to learn of his part in the London atrocities.”He was really nice. He was one of those people you never expected to get into trouble. He was just so good. What possessed his soul?"

Sally Lewin also attended Rawthorpe and grew up a little awed by Jamal. "He did all his exams and was in the top group. He was dead brainy."

Source: The Guardian

In contrast, on August 8th, The Huddersfield Examiner published an interview with a woman named Juliet Davidson, a former drug addict who claims that Jamal was her dealer:

“Juliet, 26, first met Lindsay - known to her as G - five years ago outside a row of shops in Harp Inge, Dalton.

He was just 14 at the time and a student at Rawthorpe High School.

She said: "He used to hang around and when I was going there to score one day he asked me to get my drugs off him.

"I used to get heroin and crack cocaine off him every day for about two years.

Source: Huddersfield Examiner

Some reports say that Maryam converted to Islam when Jamal was 15, and he converted to the faith himself shortly after. Other reports state that it was Jamal who became a Muslim first and persuaded his mother to convert - and others say that they converted to Islam at the same time.

There are contradictory accounts as to how the conversion changed Jamal. Some say he completely altered his attitudes and appearance:

“After he converted, Lindsay came to be known as the most pious of all the Muslim teens in the hardscrabble neighborhood and tried to convert other children.

''He became more extreme than anybody else," recalled Chris John, 17, a high school classmate and neighborhood friend from Lindsay's youth. ''When he converted, he stopped hanging out with his normal friends."

Lindsay stopped chasing girls and play-fighting in the halls of Rawthorpe High School. He turned his attention to academics and athletics, where by all accounts he shined. He broke records in track and scored some of the highest marks in the school on exams. When other kids would write a few paragraphs for a history essay, he would lay out his argument all afternoon, in page after page after page.

In all that he accomplished, Lindsay credited his religion.

''Every little thing that he did, he would always say 'Allah Akbar' [God is great] as loud as he could after everything," said a close friend from high school who asked that his name be withheld because of the media attention. ''Whether it was getting a goal [in soccer], or winning the 100-meter."

Source: Boston Globe

Others say he kept it very quiet and did not make an issue of it:

“When he was about 15, he converted to Islam at the same time as his mother.

"We were surprised but he didn't make a big deal about it," said a former classmate. "He was just a regular guy. He was bright but quiet. He was keen on athletics and we used to go out running together."

Source: The Telegraph

According to the Daily Mirror article ‘Prize Fighter’ which was published on July 16th 2005, but is not available in the newspaper’s online archive, Jamal had given career advice to fellow students at Rawthorpe, appearing on a council careers website, talking about the benefits of doing work experience with a local company. In the Mail on Sunday article ‘Wife thought Bomber was having an Affair’ it is stated:

“The teenager had planned to become a solicitor, but after getting several GSCEs, he inexplicably failed to take up an offer of a place at Greenhead Sixth Form college in Huddersfield.”

Source: Mail on Sunday, July 24th 2005

However, an explanation for the ‘inexplicable’ failure of Jamal to study at Greenhead was given by a friend in an interview with The Boston Globe:

“Everything changed after Lindsay graduated from high school, perhaps due to an accident of fate. He applied to Greenhead College, a nationally acclaimed school in Huddersfield, and his exceptionally high grades assured him admission, the close friend recalled. But his application was lost in the mail, the friend said, and by the time he reapplied the school was already full.”

Source: Boston Globe

Maryam emigrated to America in 2002, leaving Jamal in Huddersfield. She told the Mail on Sunday:

“Jamal told me Britain was his home. He said he wanted to get a job before going back to his studies. I felt he had become such a responsible kid after his conversion that he would be OK. A probation officer who attended our mosque said he’d keep an eye on him and rented him a house. I helped support him and he was able to claim benefit. We never lost touch. I’d call him once or twice a week and visit every year."

Oddly, even though the Mail on Sunday acknowledged that Maryam emigrated in 2002, it states later in the article:

“There have been reports that Germaine was monitored by the FBI after spending a month long holiday with his mother in Cleveland in December 2001, three months after the World Trade Centre attacks.”

If his mother didn’t move until 2002, it is rather unlikely that he would have visited her there in 2001. On this confusing issue, another report states:

“Some American officials, who render the Jamaican bomber's name as Jermaine Maurice Lindsay, say he was on a list of some 2,000 names collected last year in connection with Operation Crevice, a British and Pakistani joint police action aimed at foiling an alleged terror plot. It appears that Lindsay had contact with someone under scrutiny in the case, which concerned a scheme to blow up London's Heathrow airport or some other target of similar magnitude. But the Jamaican, who American investigators say visited his mother in Cleveland more than once during the 1990s, was never listed as a major terror suspect, and some British officials deny they ever had him in their sights.”

Source: MSNBC

Also:

“Sources say that he visited her there in both 1994 and in either 2000 or 2001. Now, those sources say that the last visit was short, only about four -- three or four days. Now, keep in mind, Lindsay is reportedly only about 19 or 20, so he would have been about 14 when he last came to the United States.”

Source: CNN

When Jamal was 14, he was still living in Huddersfield with his mother. In 1994, he would have been only 8 years old; incredibly young to have merited being on an FBI terror watch list. The Independent newspaper believes the confusion has resulted from a simple case of mistaken identity:

“A similar mix-up is understood to be behind the claims by US intelligence that Germaine Lindsay, 19, the bomber who carried out the King's Cross attack, was on a British watch list. This was because the "fourth" bomber was wrongly identified in the United States as Lindsay Jermaine - someone with a similar name to a terrorist suspect.”

Source: The Independent

It was not long after his mother moved abroad that Jamal began a relationship with Samantha Lewthwaite. Samantha is a white, Muslim convert who was born in Northern Ireland while her father was serving there as a British soldier. The certainty that Jamal fell in love and married a white woman suggests that he was not inclined to be racially prejudiced - contrary to the account given by Juliet Davidson:

"He was always going on about racism.He thought all white people were trash and said he was going to get them all on drugs to kill them off.”

Source: Huddersfield Examiner

The circumstances under which Jamal and Samantha met have been inconsistently reported. According to The Telegraph, he had already moved to Aylesbury and met Samantha whilst there. Some accounts specify that they met at college in Luton and together they moved from Leeds to Aylesbury where Lewthwaite, who changed her name to Sherafiyah, grew up; other reports state that they met via an internet chatroom and in an interview for an article which is no longer in the Sunday Mirror archive, entitled ‘Made into a Monster’ and published on July 17th 2005, Jamal’s stepfather said that he met Samantha at an Islamic Convention in Birmingham.

Samantha herself, in an interview with The Sun, said that they began their relationship before they had actually met face to face when she was given his email address by a friend.

At the time, Samantha was studying religion and politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies in Russell Square. Samantha said:

“I wanted to marry a British Muslim and so did he. We didn’t want an arranged marriage so I suppose in a way we kind of arranged our own.”

When they eventually met, it was in October 2002 at a Stop the War march in Hyde Park, London. Samantha said:

“The Jamal I met and married was a man of peace. We found that we were very much alike and kindred spirits. He wanted to qualify as a human rights lawyer and I was a member of an Amnesty International group at school.”

The couple married in the front room of a friend’s house and went to live in Huddersfield. According to The Guardian:

“Jamal and Ms Lewthwaite lived in a terraced house, paying the £63 a week rent by claiming housing benefit. He would supplement his income by working occasionally as a carpet fitter and with a sideline, selling mobile phone covers at the local Saturday market.”

Source: The Guardian

The following year, 2003, they moved to Bradford. It was reportedly after this move that Jamal made contact with the other men in Leeds. He had met Egyptian biochemist Dr. Magdi Mahmoud el-Nashar during the Muslim festival of Ramadan in October-November 2004. Dr. Nashar found him the flat in Alexandra Grove, Burley, which was later alleged by police to be the ‘bomb factory’. Confusingly, it was reported that he had asked Dr. Nashar for help in finding a place to live in Leeds so that he could ‘move there from London with his wife and child’. There are no reports that Jamal had ever resided in London.

A friend of Dr. Nashar, architect Abed Shad, said he met Jamal at the Grand Mosque in Burley, opposite the flat:

"He was a big, powerfully built man, not fat but muscular. He wore the traditional Muslim robes and cap and spoke with a southern or London accent. Magdy told me that he lived in Bradford for a while. I believe they met for the first time in the prayer room at Leeds University. He was studying Arabic, either on an academic or self-help basis, and was very devout.

"Jamal himself said that he lived in Bradford and I believed that he was married. He converted to Islam a few years ago. He always used to play with the children at the mosque. He liked to be with kids and seemed to be a very soft character.

He travelled from Bradford because he loved the mosque in Leeds."

Source: Daily Mirror

It seems very strange that Jamal would be described as having a ‘southern or London accent’ having lived in Yorkshire since he was a baby.

How he met the other three suspects is even less clear. The Guardian claimed, “He is understood to have met other members of the bombing team in Pakistan.”

Indeed, there were other reports that Jamal had travelled to Pakistan, and also Afghanistan, but these are denied by Samantha and his mother was quoted in the Mail on Sunday article, ‘Wife thought Bomber was Having an Affair’, as saying:

“There’s no way he could have gone to Afghanistan. He was newly married. His wife would have flipped. He didn’t even have a passport for quite a while – after his son was born in March 2004, he couldn’t bring him to see me in America.”

Source: Mail on Sunday July 24th 2005

According to The Telegraph, Jamal met the other three men at the Hamara Centre in Beeston:

“About two years ago, Lindsay and his pregnant wife left Huddersfield and moved to Bradford. He became a regular at the Hamara youth centre in Leeds, where he was befriended by the three other young Muslims who carried out the London bombings.

He resurfaced earlier this year with his pregnant wife and 15-month-old son in Aylesbury.”

Source: The Telegraph

Although, according to a different Telegraph article, it was Aylesbury that they moved to two years ago. A neighbour is quoted as saying:

"He moved down here a couple of years ago. You used to see him around all the time. He was very keen on wrestling and boxing.”

But in the same report:

“Neighbours said the couple had moved to the rented property in April. They had not been seen at the house for about a week.”

Source: The Telegraph

The reports that Jamal and Samantha had only recently moved to Aylesbury are backed up by a further Telegraph report:

“The father of Germaine Lindsay, the fourth suspected suicide bomber, has revealed that his regular telephone conversations with his son came to an abrupt end two months ago…Their conversations suddenly stopped about the time that Germaine is believed to have moved from Bradford to a rented flat in Aylesbury, Bucks, with his partner, Samantha Lewthwaite, and their 14-month-old son, Abdullah.”

Source: The Telegraph

And a still different account from The Scotsman, which states that:

“Originally, he lived in Bradford, where he first met Elnashar; they both attended the Grand Mosque in Leeds. The youngster - he was believed to be only 19 - then moved to Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire where he married a local woman, Samantha Lewthwaite.”

Source: The Scotsman

The Mirror wrote:

“Lindsay worked under a false identity as a fitter for Haddenham Carpets in Aylesbury until around May 2005. He called himself Gemal Lindsay, a corruption of his real name and Islamic name Abdullah Shaheed Jamal.”

Source: Daily Mirror

Which implies that left the company around the same time that he actually moved to Aylesbury.

The accounts of Lindsay’s connection to the flat in Alexandra Grove which he allegedly rented through Dr. Nashar are rather puzzling. The previous tenant of the flat, Samir Al Ani left to return to Iraq in May 2005. His relative, respected hospital consultant Dr Shakir Al Ani, said:

"Samir, who is a distant relative, left me the keys when he went back to Baghdad.

"There was someone coming from London who needed somewhere to stay so I gave Magdy [Dr. Nashar] the keys for him about a month ago. I did not take the other man's full name and I never met him. But I spoke to him on the phone. He had a British accent, it was not a distinct accent but he was fluent.

"He told me he wanted to get rid of some of the furniture because he needed the space, that his wife was coming and he wanted to 'do it up'. I didn't think it was a problem but explained it wasn't my property."

Source: Daily Mirror

The first curious aspect to this matter is that according to the other reports, Jamal had only just moved to Aylesbury with his wife and child a few weeks before the London attacks. Yet he was apparently trying to rent a flat for them all in Leeds at the same time.

Secondly, the descriptions of the man who neighbours saw coming and going from the flat do not resemble Jamal:

“Forensic tests confirm Jermain was at the address as well as Khan, Hussain and bomber Shahzad Tanweer, 24. Geoff Thompson, 57, who lived opposite No 18, said: "I told police I'd seen a stranger acting suspiciously some five to six weeks ago.

"He was about 6ft 3in tall and had a Mediterranean look with dark, curly hair. He'd come and go at strange hours and always seemed to be hiding from view. There was something dodgy about him. You'd see him coming out of the mosque just opposite at 3am."

Source: Daily Mirror

“A newly developed flat in bedsit land, this is where the deadly bombs were made in the bath by a mystery man who arrived from London and "needed somewhere to stay."

He is described as being of Mediterranean appearance, about 30 to 35, 6ft 3in tall, with short curly dark hair. He is believed to have left the country on July 6.”

Source: Daily Mirror

Although in some early reports, Jamal was described as being in his thirties.

Interestingly, the above descriptions sound more like the ‘mastermind’ that was believed to have been behind the suspects, who now apparently no longer exists:

“A TERROR general behind the four London suicide bombers was being hunted last night after the discovery of his explosives factory.

The mastermind, whose name is known to the Mirror, moved into the tiny housing association flat in Leeds about a month before last Thursday's murderous attacks.

He was given keys to the flat by Egyptian student Magdy Elnashar, 33, who has returned to his homeland and cannot be contacted on his mobile phone.

The suspect speaks with a British accent and may have met the bombers at Luton station on the morning of the carnage to hand over hardware or final instructions.”

Source: Daily Mirror

“The man was pictured on a closed-circuit security tape with the four bombers just before they entered London's Underground on July 7 with backpacks the police believe contained bombs. He is British and dark-skinned, apparently of Caribbean descent, the official said.”

Source: Newsday

Jamal is suspected of detonating a bomb on the Piccadilly Line between Kings Cross and Russell Square, killing 26 people. There is no clear evidence for any motivation he may have had to carry out such an attack.

His widow, Samantha, appears to believe that Jamal was influenced by extremists he came across in mosques in London and Luton:

“She said: “His behaviour gradually began to change. He turned from the man that I married. In hindsight I can now see exactly what was happening to him and why. How these people could have turned him and poisoned his mind is dreadful. He was an innocent, naive and simple man. I suppose he must have been an ideal candidate.”

Source: The Times

Certainly there is speculation that Jamal went to the same mosque as Richard Reid, the notorious ‘Shoe Bomber’ and Zacarias Moussaoui, who was sentenced to life in prison in May 2006 for his apparent involvement in the planning of 9/11.

However, given that Reid and Moussaoui were arrested and detained in 2001, at the time when Jamal was still in Huddersfield, it is unlikely that he would have met them, even if he did attend the mosque.

It has also been speculated by some media that Jamal was involved with extremist groups and The Telegraph wrote:

“An obsessive body-builder, Lindsay had moved to Aylesbury only seven weeks ango. Once there, he forged close links to Islamic fanatics in the Luton area.

Though Lindsay never officially joined al-Muhajiroun, the organisation that celebrated the slaughter of 3,000 on September 11, he was well known among its ranks. At weekends he would join other members on the streets of Luton, openly recruiting. As he handed out leaflets, he became familiar to passers-by as "one of those looneys".

Source: The Telegraph

But no concrete evidence has been presented that he actually was. There is also no proof that despite possible involvement with radical Islamic groups, he would have been influenced to the extent of carrying out mass murder.

There are some accounts that indicate very un-Islamic behaviour exhibited by Jamal. The Guardian newspaper interviewed his neighbours on Northern Road in Aylesbury, one of whom said:

“I saw him on a daily basis. I don't think he worked because he was always around during the day, taking the baby in and out of the Fiat Brava. He would park it over the entrance to my property and people would complain to him about that. They were getting quite cheesed off with him."

She added: "The other thing was the noise. They would play very loud music in the house and the car. When it came from the house people would knock and complain. They would never open the door but eventually the music would be turned down. The neighbours were getting quite upset about it."

Source: The Guardian

According to the Belfast Telegraph:

“The details of Lindsay's last days were revealed in an interview with his mother Maryam McLeod Ismaiyl who, fearing reprisals, is in hiding on the Caribbean island of Grenada, where she has been living for several months.

Samantha told her the pair had had a row, she said, adding: "She told me he had lost his job and that she had discovered he'd been sending text messages addressed to a girl.”

Source: Belfast Telegraph

Jamal had also apparently been on a spending spree buying large quantities of perfume. This was attributed to the possible use of alcohol in the making of bombs – even though there are much cheaper ways to purchase alcohol.

The amount of money Jamal was spending had aroused the suspicion of his bank who had taken the rather unusual step of bringing in private detectives to investigate him.

“Noel Hogan, of investigators Hogan and Co International, said last night: "We were aware of this man's movements in the immediate run-up to the London bombing.

"As soon as we became aware of his involvement we contacted the Anti-Terrorist Branch. We have passed them our full records. I can say no more."

Source: Daily Mirror

Samantha had apparently later decided that the texts were not to a girl after all, but must have been to do with the planning of the attacks.

Nevertheless, she did not report him missing straight away after the bombings so convinced was she that he had left her for another woman. (Mail on Sunday, July 24th 2005)

Peculiarly, in the days following the identification of the men as the suspected bombers, Samantha was adamant that her husband could not have been involved:

“He wasn't the sort of person who'd do this. I won't believe it until I see proof,"

“Samantha Lewthwaite, the wife of the Jamaican suspect, told The Sun newspaper she refused to believe her husband was among the bombers "until they have his DNA."

Source: International Herald Tribune

Yet in the interview with the Sun, published on September 23rd, she said:

“The next day [July 14th] they showed me Jamal on CCTV and said his DNA proved he was one of the bombers. My world collapsed”

Source: The Times

This is very odd considering that the police stated on the same day, July 14th, that DNA identification of Jamal would take some time.

Curiously, according to The Times, the DNA sample used to identify Jamal's remains was taken from the pay and display ticket he had apparently put on his car in Luton station car park. He had reportedly arrived at Luton station at 5am on July 7th, waiting almost an hour in the car park for the other three suspects to arrive. The car in which he would have used to travel from Aylesbury to Luton has remained an object of mystery compared to the detailed reporting of the Nissan Micra which was alleged to have been used by the men from Leeds. It is completely unclear in any media report exactly which car Jamal drove in his everyday life, if it was his own car he used to drive to Luton on the 7th or if it was one he had hired and what exactly was found in the car at whichever point it was recovered from the car park. Some media had reported that Jamal's car had been towed away on the day of the attacks and stayed in a lock-up for five days. The reports said that the car had been taken away 'as a matter of routine', but if it was the car park ticket which gave police the DNA sample to identify him, then the car would presumably have been properly ticketed according to the rules of the car park. It is hard to see, then, how it could have aroused suspicion enough to warrant being towed away on the day when nobody knew who was responsible for the atrocities in London.

When the Metropolitan Police gave press conferences on July 12th and July 14th, they stated that they had found personal documents bearing the names of three of the four men close to the seats of three of the explosions. They have never stated that they found personal documents close to the seat of the Piccadilly Line explosion bearing the name of Jamal, who is suspected of causing it.

Bizarrely, Jamal was not the original name given as that of the 'fourth bomber'. This was originally reported to be Ejaz or Eliaz Fiaz, whose name was given by the press in the same way in which they reported the names of the other three suspects before the police had confirmed them. Fiaz's brother, Naveed, was arrested shortly after the bombings and released on July 23rd without charge.

His mother said that Jamal did not believe in hurting innocent people in the name of Islam:

“At the time of the family's conversion, a ''climate of extremism" was growing in Islam, Ismaiyl said, and she sometimes discussed with her son the violent acts of other Muslims. Both agreed that suicide bombing was unacceptable.”

Source: Boston Globe

“McLeod added that his suspected role in the bombings was incomprehensible because "after Sept. 11, I was devastated, and so was Germaine." She added, "We cried for all the people who died and wondered how Muslims could do this."

Source: International Herald Tribune

"Jamal was the best son I could have hoped for, I respected and admired him so very much. I have so many questions but I do not know if I'll ever receive the answers, perhaps only Allah - he's the only one who knows everything. I need evidence to believe that my baby could ever harm anyone, let alone kill, injure or traumatise a community and the world."

Source: Daily Mirror

“I don’t know whether that was my son. Neither I nor his wife have been able to identify him.”

Source: The Times

Jamal's half sister, Dana, spoke of her "great brother":

"I want proof," she said. "He did change but he never changed in his love for people."

Source: The Age

His widow Samantha, cradling in her arms the newborn daughter that Jamal would never meet, said:

“The killing of innocent British civilians by Jamal was something I could never comprehend because he was always a peaceful man who loved people,” she said. “He was so angry when he saw Muslim civilians being killed on the streets of Iraq, Bosnia, Palestine and Israel — and always said it was the innocent who suffered.”

Source: The Times

For further information, please see the J7 Incident Analysis for King's Cross / Russell Square.