Profile: Germaine Lindsay

Germaine Lindsay

Germaine Lindsay, was the only one of the four 7 July London suicide bombers to be born outside the UK.

After spending the first year of his life in Jamaica, Lindsay moved to the UK with his mother in 1986.

The family settled in Huddersfield in West Yorkshire - thought to be the place where Lindsay met fellow bomber Mohammad Sidique Khan.

His home life was not stable. His natural father remained in Jamaica and appears to have played little role in his life. His mother moved in with another man, who was a harsh stepfather to Lindsay.

By 1990, that relationship dissolved and Lindsay's mother moved in with another man.

Lindsay was much closer to his second stepfather, who remained with the family until 2000.

Al-Qaeda leaflets

The year 2000 represented a watershed in Lindsay's life - as both he and his mother converted to Islam. He took the name Jamal.

In Islamic groups around Huddersfield and Dewsbury, he was admired for the speed with which he achieved fluency in Arabic and memorised long passages of the Koran, showing unusual maturity and seriousness.

But at around the same time, he started to associate with troublemakers and was disciplined at school for handing out leaflets in support of al-Qaeda.

Lindsay was influenced by an extremist preacher, Abdallah al-Faisal, a fellow Jamaican, who was jailed in 2003 for soliciting murder and race hate.

But before al-Faisal was jailed, his mother decided to move to the US to live with another man, leaving Lindsay alone at the family home in Huddersfield.

He left school, lived on benefits, and did odd jobs selling mobile phones and Islamic books.

He married Samantha Lewthwaite, a white British convert to Islam whom he had met on the internet and later at a Stop the War march in London, on 30 October 2002.

They lived initially in Huddersfield but moved to Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, where his wife's family lived, in September 2003. Six months later, their first child was born.

While in Aylesbury, Lindsay worked as a carpet-fitter, a job he had obtained with the help of his brother-in-law, although he was later sacked.

In September 2004, he rented a house close to Mohammad Sidique Khan in Dewsbury.

Since the bombings, more evidence has emerged about Lindsay's extremist views, violence and criminal activities. School friends reported his racial hatred towards Jews, and in late 2004 he assaulted his wife.

The inquests also heard that Lindsay was linked to a suspected armed robbery in Bedfordshire weeks before the bombings - and although his car was linked to the scene, the lead was never fully followed up.

Seeking a gun

In the weeks leading up to the bombings, Lindsay attempted to date an Aylesbury woman, Nicki Blackmore. At first, she did not know what to make of him - but on the second meeting, things took a turn for the worse.

"He asked me if I could get hold of a gun for him," she said in a statement read at the inquests. "He did not mention any type of gun. I told him no and asked him why he would need a gun. He told me that he was going to London with some of his mates to teach some people a lesson. He said it was to do with drugs."

He read her al-Qaeda poems and later suggested she stayed with him in London on the evening of 6 July.

Ms Blackmore was afraid and turned him down. She let him down gently by suggesting they meet a little over a week later on her birthday.

Lindsay replied: "I might be around then, but then again I might not."

The next day he boarded a Piccadilly Line train at King's Cross. Shortly afterwards, he detonated his bomb, killing himself and 26 others and injuring more than 340.

Samantha Lewthwaite gave birth to his second child after the bombings.