'Nice guys' next door plotted horrific attacks
BY JAMES GORDON MEEK and KIERAN O'LEARY
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
Friday, August 11th, 2006

A pizza shop owner and a biochemist. An airport worker and the son of a political official. Husbands and fathers. Students as young as 17.

Meet the faces of terror. Meet the madmen next door.

Outside the view of friends, family and neighbors, a group of suburban men were allegedly plotting a terror campaign to rival - and even exceed - the bloodshed of 9/11.

But in a series of raids that began before dawn yesterday, British police arrested 24 people - most of them sons of Britain, most of them never suspected of any wrongdoing by their neighbors. Several communities awoke yesterday to the stunning news that a murderous terror plot, with suspected ties to Al Qaeda, was hatched right in their midst.

The Bank of England froze the accounts of 19 of the suspects early today.

Among those taken into custody yesterday were Amjad and Assad Sawar, brothers who ran a car import business.

"They're good mates of mine and Muslims. One has a baby girl and he loves his wife to bits. These guys would never do any terrorism," said a stunned neighbor, Ashiq Rasul.

The two brothers lived quietly in High Wycombe, a commuter town northwest of London, British media said. Nine homes near the Sawar house were evacuated as police searched it and emerged with large boxes filled with confiscated items.

"They are perfect neighbors," said Gerald Stevens, 84.

The Sawar brothers are in their 20s, of Pakistani descent and are big cricket fans. The two had become "very religious" in recent years, neighbors said.

Phil Redfern, who went to school with the pair, said they began to shun mainstream mosques a few years ago and instead frequented a smaller mosque behind a nearby Islamic bookshop.

Another suspect, Don Stewart-Whyte, 21, also of High Wycombe, converted to Islam just six months ago and recently married. He appeared to have settled down after a youth filled with drugs and booze.

"He admitted to me he used to be a naughty boy, smoking spliffs and drinking, but he is all right now. I can't believe this is happening," Shauib Bahatti, whose son went to school with the suspect, told London's Daily Mirror.

Stewart-Whyte lives with his mother, who was away on vacation when the terror squad swept in and hauled him away in handcuffs.

Oliver Savant, a taxi driver and now a suspect in the mass murder plot, was another convert to Islam. He's 25 with a pregnant wife.

"I'm outraged. We're shocked and angry that we're being put through this. He's married, a newlywed expecting a baby. Our parents are traumatized, as you would expect," his brother Adam told the Mirror.

Retired fireman Paul Kleinman, 66, said he's known Savant, of Walthamstow, northeast of London, "since the day he was born.

"He was a very polite young man. Oliver started putting on Muslim robes and growing his beard long a few years back," he told the Daily Mail. Other friends said he had begun to go by the name Ibrahim.

The youngest suspect, Abdul Muneem Patel, was only 17.

Also arrested yesterday were Waheed Zaman, a biochemistry student, and Amin Asmin Tariq, who works at London's Heathrow Airport.

A close family friend told the Daily Mail that Tariq, a security guard, had been arrested in a dawn raid in a quiet residential street in Walthamstow.

The 23-year-old had recently married and had a 3-week-old baby named Axa. He was described by neighbors as the "least religious" of the close-knit Muslim family, the paper said.

Zaman is a well-known political activist and head of the Islam Society at London Metropolitan University, the paper said.

"He loves fish and chips and Liverpool Football Club," Zaman's shocked sister Safeena told The Times of London.

In Walthamstow, Wendy Phillips, 31, said two men were arrested near her home. They had bought a house for cash - unusual in expensive London - and just moved in last month, she said. A "SOLD" sign still stood in front.

"It's scary when it's on your doorstep," Phillips said. "You start wondering who you're living next door to." Neighbors thought two bearded men, possibly from north Africa or Pakistan, lived in the home.

Amar Singh, 17, stood on the corner across the street from the house talking animatedly with friends about the alleged plot.

"I'm shocked," Singh said. "This is usually a quiet area."

Police also arrested more suspects at two other homes in Walthamstow.

Neighbors said one of those man arrested was Usman Saddique, 24, who runs a pizza shop. He was believed to be a childhood friend of Ibrahim Savant.

The 24 suspects arrested so far in the air terror plot were mostly British Muslims of Pakistani descent, officials said yesterday.

"They were in most cases second- and third-generation Kashmiri-Pakistanis," House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Pete King (R-L.I.) told the Daily News.

Kashmir is a disputed region bordering Pakistan and India, which both countries have fought over. Al Qaeda has ties to militant Kashmiri separatists and operates training camps there.

With News Wire Services