Jordan Times
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Jordanian ‘bomb plot suspect’
innocent, says father
By Randa Habib
Agence France-Presse
AMMAN — The father of a Jordanian doctor reportedly arrested by British police
investigating three failed bombings said Monday his son was devoted to becoming
a surgeon and incapable of such attacks.
Mohammad Jamil Abdul Qader Asha, the 27-year-old father of a small boy, could be
the mastermind of the bomb plots, officials in Amman said on condition of
anonymity, adding that his wife Marwa Dana was also arrested.
British police detained seven people since a blazing car loaded with gas
canisters ploughed into the door of the main terminal at Glasgow airport on
Saturday following two failed car bombings in London Friday.
The following day, anti-terror officers arrested a man and a woman, believed to
be Asha and his wife, on a motorway in northwest England.
They are now being questioned in London, while Scottish police were on Monday
searching North Staffordshire hospital, where Asha has offices.
Asha’s father, Jamil Abdul Qader Asha, told AFP from his modest apartment in the
working class suburb of Al Zuhur, in southwest of Amman, that he had not been
informed of his son’s arrest and had learnt about it only through the media.
“My son is incapable of such acts,” said Jamil Asha, a former teacher in his 60s
with eight children, showing off pictures of Mohammad.
“Mohammad is pious, like the rest of us, but certainly not an extremist.”
Asked if Mohammad went to the mosque, Jamil replied: “He didn’t have time for
that, he studied all the time.”
“He was a brilliant student. He wanted to become an excellent surgeon and was
not the type to get involved in political issues. At university he wasn’t even a
member of any student unions.”
Jamil called on the King to intervene with the British authorities, saying: “Not
all Arabs are terrorists.”
Jamil Asha said his son obtained his medical degree in Jordan in 2004 after
attending a school for gifted students in Amman, and the following year left for
Britain to pursue his studies in his chosen field of neurology.
“I cannot imagine he had any other goal than to realise his ambition by studying
in Britain,” he said.
He said he had last spoken to his son four days ago and that he had tried to
call his mobile phone repeatedly since the reports of his arrest emerged, but in
vain.
“When I spoke to him on Friday, he told us that he had reserved a flight from
London to Amman for the 12th of July. He was excited about the idea of coming to
see his family and asked us what gifts we wanted,” he said.
Jamil described the slightly-built bespectacled Mohammad, who married in 2004
and has a son aged two-and-a-half, as a calm man who rarely got angry. “He had
the head of an intellectual,” he said.
“My son was happy in Britain, he was always telling us. He didn’t feel he was
the brunt of any negative sentiment as an Arab or a Muslim; on the contrary.”
Jamil said he had tried and failed to find out more information about his son
from the Foreign Ministry in Amman.
“It’s a mistake. The British are going to find out it is an error. Mohammad is
innocent.”