London, July 14
The uncle of one of the four suspected suicide bombers of Pakistan origin, who rocked London on Thursday afternoon, has said some radical groups in Pakistan might have brainwashed their ward to take to terror acts. According to family sources, Shehzad Tanweer, who blew off the underground train at Aldgate, had gone to his home country last year to learn the Quran, and might have been indoctrinated into extremism by different groups.

Bashir Ahmed (65), Shehzad's uncle, said if he had known that his nephew was involved with any fanatical group, he would have put a stop to it.

"He went to Pakistan but it was to learn about his religion. It was not a terror camp. But he might have been in an environment where different political views must have been discussed and pressure put on young people to get involved in various groups. He was just a good British boy when he was growing up, a young sports fan from a good family. It is hard to accept what must have happened to him," the Daily Mail quoted the uncle as saying.

Indicating that his nephew might have been influenced by some terror groups in Pakistan, he said: "We believe radical groups must have secretly been coming round importing extreme ideas into the community. Shehzad would not have been capable of this bombing unless his mind had been poisoned." Ahmed further said his nephew was cool and calm and that the family had been left "shattered" by the news that the 22-year-old was a suicide bomber.

"The family is shattered. This is a terrible thing. It wasn't him. It must have been forces behind him. He was a very kind and calm person. He was respected by everyone. His parents were very proud of him and very pleased he was taking his religious studies seriously when many parents are worried about their children going to the pub," he said.

Denying reports that Shehzad travelled to Afghanistan to take part in terrorist training camps, Ahmed said: "There is no way, I have seen his passport."

Meanwhile, a report in The Sun said like his fellow bomber Hasib Hussain, Tanweer too had a brush with the law last year when he was cautioned for disorderly conduct.

The report also said people who knew him were shocked at his involvement in the bombings. One of his former school friends said: "Nobody can believe it. When he was at school, his hero was Mike Tyson, not Osama bin Laden. He was quite religious but had little interest in politics. He loved sport. He was cricket mad and a good fast bowler. He loved boxing and American wrestling. He played football for the school and was brilliant at the triple jump and long jump."

Another ex-pupil from Wortley High School in Leeds said: "He would have been the last person you would say would get involved in something like this. He was kind, polite and respectful at school. He was super-intelligent. We used to struggle to get good grades but he seemed to find it all easy. His family was very strict about him doing his homework. He was a really quiet lad but also had a great sense of humour and was always smiling. He was a teacher's dream. He always got on with any work he was set and was always extremely polite." — ANI

London buses and cabs stopped and workers put down their tools as the two-minute silence was announced at noon.

Britain came to a standstill during the two-minute silence with workers leaving offices and coming to streets to pay tributes to the victims.

Queen Elizabeth II, along with Prince Charles and his wife Camilla, joined the people across the country in paying the silent tribute.

Prime Minister Tony Blair marked the silence at the garden of his official residence at 10-Downing Street while lawmakers broke off debates in the House of Commons and the House of Lords to remember the victims of the bombings.

A revolutionary new body scanner which could enable the police and security forces to detect suicide bombers entering rail and tube stations has been developed by a British company.

The equipment, known as the millimetre wave camera, is already in production for a number of overseas security agencies and could be deployed in the UK if the threat to the travelling public increases.

QinetiQ, the company behind the technology, has tested the equipment at Gatwick airport and the Channel Tunnel terminal in Calais where it has been used to screen lorries for asylum seekers and illegal immigrants.

The technology was originally developed by the British Government's Defence Evaluation Research Agency, the forerunner of QinetiQ, to help soldiers and pilots see through fog and cloud. But it has now been adapted to see through a person's clothing to detect whether they are carrying guns, explosives and even biological weapons.

The device works by passively detecting naturally recurring radiation as it reflects off materials such as metal or high explosives. Because these materials reflect 100 per cent of natural radiation whereas the body only reflects 30 per cent, it enables the scanner to detect a person's actual body shape, foiling attempts to conceal items underneath clothing.

The scanner can then either give an analogue warning from green to red or it can be linked to an imaging system to give an actual "see through" picture of the person and any device strapped to them or contained in a rucksack.

The device tested at Gatwick was a "people portal" through which passengers walked but QinetiQ has also developed a stand-off device with a range of up to 100 feet which can either be hand-held or mounted on a tripod and looks like a surveyor's theodolite.

The equipment costs between (pounds sterling)200,000 and (pounds sterling)500,000 per device, depending on the format used, which would make it enormously expensive to equip the entire London Underground or the above ground rail network. It would also slow down journey times even though it is three times faster than conventional airport security scanners with the capacity to handle up to 50 persons a minute.

Concerns about personal privacy can be overcome using a computer graphics overlay which only highlights the parts of the body which the security forces are interested in.

— By arrangement with The Independent, London.

Dubai, July 14
Within a week after its release in the UAE, Amitabh Bachchan’s latest flick ‘Sarkar’ has triggered a controversy, with many moviegoers taking a strong exception to the oblique depiction of its national hero as a ‘hitman’ in the movie.

The film has ruffled the feathers of movie buffs after they found the character of an Olympic gold medalist in the movie, hired from Dubai to finish off the underworld don played by Bachchan, closely resembling international shooter Shaikh Ahmad Mohammad Hasher Al Maktoum.

Maktoum, a member of Dubai’s ruling family, is UAE’s national hero after he won for the country its first gold medal in the men’s double trap shooting event at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games.

“It’s outrageous. How can they depict a UAE gold medalist as a hitman? The movie should be scrapped immediately,” a moviegoer was quoted as saying by the Gulf News.

“Amitabh Bachchan was appointed ambassador of the Dubai Shopping Festival this year. But instead of promoting Dubai, he has acted in a movie which shows Dubai, particularly its national hero in a bad light,” another viewer said.

Meanwhile, Dubai’s Information and Culture Ministry is closely watching the whole episode.

“We are contemplating watching the translated version of the movie for any objectionable scenes,” an officer handling censorship issues told the daily.

The Ram Gopal Varma directed movie, which was released in India on July 1 amidst much fanfare, is loosely inspired by Francis Ford Copolla’s classic ‘Godfather.’ — PTI