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The “shame” of being a suicide bomber’s wife

LONDON: The woman behind the “niqab”, through which only her eyes were visible, tried to fight off tears as she spoke about how it felt to be branded as the “wife of a suicide bomber”, and the effect her husband’s actions had on her life.

For Hasina Patel living with the shame of being the wife of Siddique Khan, who masterminded the London bombings of July 7, 2005, has been traumatic.

Ms. Patel (29), who is of Indian descent though born and brought up in Britain, was arrested in May this year and closely questioned for seven days before being released without charge — an experience which has left her bitter.

In her first public comments since the 7/7 attacks that claimed 52 lives, Ms. Patel said she “completely condemned” what her husband did and was still trying to make sense of it.

While Khan was preparing to carry out one of Britain’s worst terror attacks she was in hospital being told that she had had a miscarriage. She had not seen him for two days when he left saying he was going to meet some friends. Only five days later, she learnt that he had been involved in the attacks.

“I’m still trying to get my head round everything that happened, I am still really confused to be honest. It is like two different people, I can’t link the two things together at all. I try and I try to piece things together in my head but I don’t know..” she told Sky TV.

After her miscarriage, she went home and saw the bombings on TV. “I just couldn’t believe it… I was thinking about my miscarriage and trying to phone him every day…. The following week….the police came to my house, they just said we think he is involved in the London bombings and I just thought…someone has got something mixed up or wrong. I was just in shock …”

That turned her life upside down. “I feel like I’ve lost my own identity. All people know me as his wife. And I think that’s all people judge me as,” she said.

Ms. Patel, who met Khan in 1997 when both were students at Leeds University, has a three-year-old daughter from him. She described Khan, whose family came from Pakistan, as a “good person” who was “brainwashed by the wrong people”.

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