These are the fanatical young British parents who planned to sacrifice their own precious baby in the evil cause of mass murder.
Abdula Ahmed Ali, 25, and his wife, Cossor, 23, are among those being interrogated by anti-terror police as suspects in the massive plot to attack trans-Atlantic flights in midair.
What the outwardly normal couple had secretly intended is almost too horrifying to consider, cops said.
The Alis planned to use 6-month-old Zain’s baby bottle as a liquid bomb, blowing themselves and their innocent child up, along with hundreds of other victims aboard the flight.
Cossar was allowed to bring Zain to a police station house so she could breast-feed him there. The baby was later turned over to her grandparents.
To their friends and neighbors in A housing project in north London, the Alis were known as quiet, struggling parents and as observant Muslims who showed no signs of ties to terrorism.
“Cossor was not someone I had an argument with, never any problems,” said Bronwene Hammond, who attended London’s Walthamstow School for Girls with her.
“She would wear the full Muslim outfit because of her parents, but she was never preaching,” she told The Mail on Sunday. “There were a lot more religious people at school.”
But British security experts suspect Cossor Ali is an example of a chilling new phenomenon – a woman terrorist willing to use her innocent appearance to allay suspicions and carry out a suicide bomb attack. At least 20 Muslim women have blown themselves up in such attacks in Israel, Chechnya, Iraq and elsewhere.
Particularly disturbing was Cossor Ali’s apparent intent to conceal the liquid trigger for a bomb in Zain’s baby bottle when the family boarded a jetliner.
“It may be beyond belief, but we are convinced that there are now women in Britain who are prepared to die with their babies for their twisted cause,” a security adviser to the British government told The Times of London.
“They are ruthless, single-minded and totally committed.”
Cossor, a British citizen like her husband, lived with her parents and two older sisters, Farrah and Sadia, before marrying Ali three years ago. It’s not known how they met, but he attended another Walthamstow school, along with two others arrested last week – his brother Assan Abdullah Khan, 21, and a Pakistani-born man, Waheed Arafat Khan, 25.
Assan Khan and Waheed Khan are not related, they but attended the east London mosque, Masjid e-Umer, where eight members of the conspiracy met and which is now a focus of the investigation.
Ali, like the other two men, was recalled as a routine student when he attended Aveling Park School.
“He certainly wasn’t the sort of person you would describe as radical when he was at school,” a former pupil said. “He was just a normal boy who didn’t stand out from the crowd.”
Ali’s younger brother lived in a small home in London with his parents, a sister and another brother. British investigators have disclosed few details since the startling series of arrests last week triggered a sweeping series of security measures at airports, including restrictions on baby bottles and formulas.
Because of suspicions like those that fell on Cossor Ali, mothers are being required to taste babies’ milk at airline check-ins before they are allowed to take them aboard aircraft.
Friends and relatives of members of the alleged plot say some suspects had recently visited Pakistan, where the conspiracy is believed to have been based.
Cossor’s grandfather Nazir Ahmed, 84, said Ali made an unexpected visit to Pakistan about four weeks ago.
“We didn’t understand what the hurry was and why he had to go on his own,” he told The Mail on Sunday.
Cossor and her husband were receiving government assistance and recently moved into a housing project in Walthamstow.