Khalid Kelly, that is. From Britain’s Sunday Times:
An Irish jihadist living in Pakistan’s Swat valley says he is preparing to wage war against British and allied troops in Afghanistan.
Khalid Kelly, a former altar boy from the Liberties area of Dublin who used to be known as Terry, told The Sunday Times he is undergoing weapons training in Pakistan’s mountainous tribal region in order to fight jihad against the enemies of Islam. His dream is to face a British soldier in combat, although he would “settle” for an American, he said…
Asked how he would feel about his own three-year-old son becoming a suicide bomber he replied: “I hope he goes to jannah [heaven] before marriageable age.” His son, named Osama after Kelly’s role model, lives in Britain with his Pakistani mother and two younger brothers. His father reckons Osama will be efficient with weapons by the age of ten…
Somewhere in my book I say that Islam is a unitary ideology with multiple appeals. For impressionable types from John Walker Lindh to the Prince of Wales, its eastern exoticism has more appeal than the dreary occidental faiths; for the likes of Richard Reid and Khalid Kelly, it’s the ultimate global gang:
Kelly, 42, is an unconventional jihadist. Having grown up a staunch Catholic and trained as a nurse, he moved to Saudi Arabia in 1996 to work at the King Faisal hospital on a tax-free salary. In 2000 he was introduced to radical Islam by an Afghan when he was serving time in the Al-Ha’ir prison in Riyadh for bootlegging… He achieved notoriety in 2007 when he declared the London bombings of 7 July a “happy day”.