Hero Of Islam

Shehzad Tanweer, one of four Muslim bombers who self-destructed during the first wave of Tube bombings in London on July 7, had his funeral in his family's village near Lahore in Pakistan. His body was not there, but thousands of people attended to pray for his swift passage into paradise, though he is guaranteed paradise as a martyr for the faith, a shahid. The crowd of Pakistanis hailed him as a "a hero of Islam." The price of his ticket to paradise was the lives of seven infidels killed and ninety wounded by his bomb in the Tube at the Aldgate station.

Here are his seven victims, whose deaths made Tanweer a hero in his home town in Pakistan.


Carrie Taylor was a 24-year-old single girl from Billericay, Essex who lived with her parents and brother, Simon. Her mother last saw her at the Liverpool Street station on her way to work at the Royal Society of Arts on the Embankment. Her temporary job there had just been made permanent. Carrie was going in early to do some shopping at Aldgate before work. Carrie had been secretly writing a novel. Her mother, June Taylor, says, "I know it's in her bedroom but I can't go in there. If I did it would seem so very final." June says of her daughter, "I'm so very glad that the last picture I have of her in my head is smiling and waving at me."

Benedetta Ciaccia, 30, business analyst for Pearson Shared Services, was going to marry her fiance, Fiaz Bhatti, a British Muslim, in September. She lived with him in Norwich. They were going to honeymoon in Sardinia and Corsica.

Her first employer in England remembers, "Benedetta first came to England from Rome about 10 years ago to be our au pair and to help with our two daughters, Bridie and Megan (then aged 4 and 2). Our children could count in Italian before they could count in English. Megan has been an accomplished pasta cook since the age of three. She was to stay with us for six months but extended it to nine. When she left us, Benny decided at first to remain in Gravesend, Kent, where we lived and we would see her from time to time, but more recently we lost touch with her when she moved from the area. We are very shocked and sad to hear the news that she has been identified as having been on the Aldgate tube. She was a funny, lovely, elegant and very intelligent young woman and was adored by our children, especially Megan. It is hard to imagine how someone so gentle could die so violent a death."

Richard James Ellery, 21, a shopworker in Jessops store in Kensington. Richard was on his way to a conference, travelling into Liverpool Street station on his way from his home in Ipswich. His parents last heard from him in a text message sent twenty-one minutes before the first blast

Richard Gray, 41, a tax manager at FW Smith Riches in London's Pall Mall. He had a wife, Louise, and two children, Adam, 11, and Ruby, seven. He was doing his usual commute to work.


Anne Moffat, 48, marketing executive, from Old Harlow, Essex, was head of marketing and communications for Girlguiding UK. Girl Guides are the British female equivalent of the Boy Scouts. The Essex Police released a statement on behalf of her brothers Chris and Tom Moffat: "Close family and friends mourn her tragic loss and wish to be given privacy to grieve as Anne herself would have wished."

Lee Baisden,34, from Romford, Essex was a party boy who had just moved in with his boyfriend of three years. He was on his way to work as an accountant for the fire brigade where he'd worked eighteen months. He boarded the Circle line through Aldgate on his way to work in Westminster, but never made it.


Fiona Stevenson, 29, from Little Baddow, Essex. Fiona worked for two years as an assistant solicitor at the criminal law firm Reynolds Dawson, where she was a duty solicitor in court and police stations, specialising in specialist fraud and extradition. She was on her way to work but never arrived. Says a friend of hers, "She was lively, great company and a hard-working lawyer with a keen interest in human rights. She marched in opposition to the war on Iraq and I remember meeting her for a pint afterwards, with a proud feeling of having stood up for something we believed in."