Anti-terrorist police are to investigate claims made on Newsnight by a former wife of a British Muslim extremist that her husband asked her to carry out a suicide bombing attack in the UK.
In an exclusive interview broadcast on Monday, the unidentified woman said her former husband showed how she should strap an explosive belt around her body under her clothes, to become a martyr. She also told Newsnight reporter Richard Watson that three weeks before the London bombings she was told by her husband that ‘something big was going to happen”.
Watson explained that the allegations aired in the story were such that the BBC was obliged to report them to the anti-terrorism police.
The BBC knows the identity of the woman’s former husband, who remains free in the UK.
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A spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Police said: ‘Any material provided to us will be considered and appropriate action taken.’She added that the police would also consider the woman’s claims made during the interview that she discussed a terrorist plot prior to 7/7.
The woman, identified as Ayesha in the broadcast, told Watson how her former husband was radicalised by British-based, Islamist extremists and may have been tipped off about a terrorist attack against the UK.
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