LONDON, June 8: The widow of a British Muslim suspected of plotting a suicide attack in Israel broke down in court on Tuesday as she recalled an e-mail sent by her husband shortly before his death, insisting she had no idea of his plans.
The trial at London's Central Criminal Court had to be briefly halted after 28-year-old Tahira Tabassum - who faces charges of failing to tell authorities about the suicide plot - began sobbing as she recounted what the e-mail said.
She told the court that the message was confused and she had simply believed that her husband, Omar Khan Sharif, intended to leave her and their two children. "I felt very sad," she told the jury of the e-mail sent eight days before the attack in which Sharif was implicated, putting her hands to her face and sobbing, prompting the judge to halt the case.
After the adjournment, Tabassum said that "all I understood from the e-mail was that Omar was leaving me". Sharif, 27, was the suspected accomplice of Assif Mohammed Hanif, a fellow Briton who blew himself up and killed three people in a bomb attack on Mike's Place pub in Tel Aviv on April 30 last year.
Hanif was the first Westerner to commit a suicide attack in Israel since the start of the current Palestinian intifada, or uprising, in September 2000. Sharif was believed by Israeli authorities to have fled after failing to set off his own bomb. His body was found floating in the sea off the coast of Israel 12 days later. -AFP
