Ramzi Mohammed was preparing to say goodbye to his partner, Azeb, a Swedish woman, and their two sons.
Mohammed, the Oval station bomber, is believed to have recorded a suicide video that police think was erased in the time between 21/7 and his eventual arrest eight days later. A banner with Arabic writing on it was found and Mohammed’s friend and fellow bomber, Hussein Osman, was arrested in possession of a video camera.
Mohammed, a Somali, had also written a suicide note that may have been the text for his video or a letter for his family. It had been entrusted to a friend.
“I beg Allah to accept this action from me . . . for verily he grants martyrdom to whomever he wills,” he wrote. “My family, don’t cry for [me]. But indeed rejoice in happiness and love what I have done for the sake of Allah for he loves those who fight in his sake.”
Mohammed, 25, arrived in Britain from Kenya in 1998 when he was 17. He lived in Slough, Berkshire, where he first met Osman.
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He told the court: “I was just a young teenager. I was going to play football, going out clubbing. I used to drink and go with girls, I was just having fun.”
Referring to Osman, Mohammed said: “We were good friends. We used to go out together clubbing, chasing girls and going to house parties.”
He settled in South London when he met Azeb and they had two sons, in 2000 and 2003. Mohammed, who had obtained indefinite leave to remain in the country, gave up his job at a bar in Waterloo station as he became more religious. He also moved out of the family home because he said that his religion forbade sex outside marriage and he could not marry his partner because she was not a Muslim.
The couple were married subsequently by an imam at Belmarsh jail after Azeb converted to Islam.
Mohammed’s religious zeal led him to throw away his Sony PlayStation and his collection of hip-hop compact discs. He told the court: “It was all f*** this and f*** that, I couldn’t listen to that anymore. It was haram [forbidden], it was wrong.”
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Unlike the other bombers, Mohammed had a regular job, working for a marketing and merchandising company and visiting shops and retail outlets in London and the South East. He met Muktar Said Ibrahim and Yassin Omar through extremist activities connected to Finsbury Park mosque. Mohammed began to attend to hear Abu Hamza preaching on the street and was photographed on a number of occasions by police surveillance teams.
Their pictures showed him, as the crowd dispersed after Friday prayers, standing near Abu Hamza and helping to fold up the tarpaulin on which the congregation had been kneeling in St Thomas Road.