Mother of Germaine Lindsay finally speaks out

The mother of suspected terrorist Germaine Lindsay finally broke her silence yesterday at a press conference in Greneda. Maryam McLeod Ismaiyl is a in disbelief that her son would be involved in such an action.

''I can't believe it," said Ismaiyl according to the today's Boston Globe. ''I have so many questions, and I do not know if I will ever receive the answers."

''Jamal, as he would love to be called, was the best son I could have ever hoped for," she told reporters in the capital of the Caribbean island, where she is staying for the summer with her husband's family. ''I am still in shock and know not how to grieve for my son. Therefore, I grieve first for the victims."

She also stressed that she tried to best way she knew how to raise her children, including that they agree that suicide bombings are wrong, but wonders sometimes. ''Perhaps I was too strict, but that's how I brought him up, and I brought him up with a lot of love," she said.

By all accounts Germaine Lindsay was an outstanding member of the mainstream Muslim community in his hometown of Huddersfield, a town outside Leeds, England. Friends and family members believe that he changed due to a accident of fate. The Globe furthers says that "...He applied to Greenhead College, a nationally acclaimed school in Huddersfield, and his exceptionally high grades assured him admission, the close friend recalled. But his application was lost in the mail, the friend said, and by the time he reapplied the school was already full."

From that point he turned to befrieding local radical Muslim leaders. He married "Samantha Lewthwaite, 22, who studied religion in college, had converted to Islam a few years earlier and taken to wearing full Islamic dress when she went outdoors. Classmates at the Grange School in Aylesbury, where she grew up, recall her as an opinionated person whose best friends were Muslim and who, after the Sept. 11 attacks, said the hijackers were simply ''standing up for their rights."

"Lewthwaite has issued a statement saying that she ''totally condemns" the London bombings, and ''never predicted or imagined that [Lindsay] was involved in such horrific activities."

Also from the Globe, "Neighbors at their most recent home recalled him as a doting father who would wave to them when he double-parked his red Fiat in front of the house on the crowded street -- the same car that was found after his death in a parking garage filled with nine extra bombs.

"He lifted weights with a friend at the Body Flex Health Club, according to the gym's owner. To break the ice, he challenged everyone at the gym to arm-wrestle, he said.

"On June 6, Lindsay bought $175 worth of vitamin supplements and peppered other men at the gym with questions about what weights to use to gain muscle, and what types of food to eat.

''If he were going to kill himself, why would he waste all the money on that?" the gym owner asked."