NAIROBI: The anger that may have led two east African immigrants to try to bomb London was more likely bred in Britain where they grew up than in the nations they left behind as children, locals and diplomats in Africa said. British police investigating the July 21 failed bomb attacks in London have arrested one of four bomb suspects, 24-year-old Yasin Hassan Omar, who came from Somalia as a child refugee in the 1990s and is now a British citizen.

Another suspect identified in newspaper reports as Muktar Said Ibrahim, 27, came from Eritrea as a refugee, Britain said. The suspected bombers’ national origins sparked British press speculation about their links to possible militant networks in the Horn of Africa.

But in east Africa, where many bristle at the notion the region is a terrorist playground because of poor border controls and security, the speculation has prompted local indignation because the two men have long since left.

“Suicide bombings are a myth and unheard of in the Somali culture,” Ahmed Nur Mohamed, a Somali immigrant in Nairobi, told Reuters after Omar’s arrest on Wednesday.

“It does not matter whether a Somali is in a big city or in the bush ... we are not known to blow up ourselves.”

Western diplomats involved with regional security and anti-terrorism efforts also rejected the notion that any suspected bombers may have learned their trade in Africa.

“These guys, whatever they learned about wanting to blow people up, they would have learned in the UK,” said one Western diplomat in Nairobi involved with Somalia.

“They were kids, just lads, when they came to the UK”

President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan made similar remarks after the earlier July 7 suicide bombings targeting London’s transport networks that killed 52.

While three of the bombers in that attack were of Pakistani origin, Musharraf suggested Britain had better look home to find the attackers’ motivation since they were born and raised there.—Reuters