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London Waiting

by | 15th, July 2005

‘YESTERDAY there was a two-minute break in the posturing, commenting and vain attempts at understanding last week’s terrorist outrage on central London.

Dignity

It was a hiatus that was well observed, as the Sun shows pictures of hundreds of people taking the time to remember the murdered and maimed in various places, from London’s King’s Cross station to Rome.

Staying quiet for a two full minutes can seem like an age (these periods of silence are growing longer: three minutes after 9/11; five-minutes in Madrid to mark a year since the city was attacked by terrorists).

But rather than use the time to think of the dead, the missing and the hurt, the papers considered the more exciting story of the killers.

The Mirror wants its readers, a group famously well practised in espionage and man hunting, to “FIND THIS MAN”. He’s called Magdy Mahmoud Elnasher, although probably not anymore.

He’s Egyptian. And the 33-year-old bio-chemist is “believed to have handed over the keys of a terror base in Leeds to the four killers”.

No, we‘re not entirely sure what that means, either. But it sounds shadowy and evil.

But never fear because the Mirror is on the case and says it has “traced” Elnasher to an address in Cairo. “Last night a woman answered the phone number but did not comment”, it says breathlessly.

This is nothing short of a sensation. But while the Mirror works its way through the Cairo phone book, calling up all the Elnashers and Mahmouds in it, the Sun brings more news of terrorist Hasib Hussain.

Yesterday the paper introduced Hussain as “THE SHOPLIFTER”. One day on and he’s the “BOMBER” who is said to have “CELEBRATED” when, as a 14-year-old sitting in class, he head the news that New York had been attacked.

As a fellow pupil tells the paper: “I always thought him capable of something like this.”

Surely, that’s some mistake. What happened to the usual stuff, what people say whenever a killer is found in their midst?

You know, when members of the local community say how he was a “lovely lad”; “good to old people”; “never too busy to lend a hand”; “loved cats”; “never saw him kill anyone before”.

And the source goes on: “When I heard on the news that people from Leeds were suspected of being involved I told friends it would be Hussein.”

Pity he didn’t tell the police. But, then, Hussain had never blown himself up on a bus before, so there’s no guarantee they would have believed him..?

Paul Sorene’



Posted: 15th, July 2005 | In: Tabloids Comment | TrackBack | Permalink