CAIRO, 25 March 2005 — Visibly distressed, Muhammad tossed his head in disbelief as he talked of how his friend’s promising life ended in disaster. His friend was identified as the perpetrator of last Saturday’s car bombing that killed a Briton outside a theater near a British school in Doha.

“This is unbelievable,” Muhammad said. “He was an ordinary person and never sounded like an extremist or someone who has a different religious or political ideology.” Muhammad added that his 39-year old friend, Omar Ahmad Abdullah Ali, had only interests related to his computer studies and his work and always planned for having a potential career.

Ali’s mother nodded in agreement, and said that after her son graduated from the Computer Engineering Department in Cairo, he immediately decided to go to Saudi Arabia to find a better, rewarding job. “He did not even think of moving to Qatar until his elder brother moved there and found a good job for him at Qatar Petroleum.”

Ali had worked in the information technology department of the energy firm since 1990, his mother said. “He had everything he wished for: A nice Palestinian wife born in Qatar, three cute kids and a job with a very good salary.

“He was also very happy when he got a baby last month and he was planning to visit Egypt this summer so that I will be able to see the baby,” the mother told Arab News.

The mother said her son called last week to tell her he was fine and confirmed his summer visit. “My son sounded very normal in the phone call and was giving me details of his next trip,” said the mother.

“If he had any intentions of carrying out the attack I would have noticed something and he would have tried to say goodbye indirectly. But it was just a normal call like all the calls he made during the past 18 years.”

Ali’s family, friends and neighbours in Cairo agreed on one thing. He was a decent man and a moderate pious Muslim who never talked about politics or even thought about having a beard.

The wife of the computer programmer, Umm Abdullah, in Doha was quoted by AFP as saying he was a devout Muslim and a man of integrity. “I am shocked,” the mother of three said. “It is impossible that he could have done that because he had no motivations and his history is as clean as snow,” said another friend.

Egyptian security sources told Arab News that Ali’s family who reside in Al-Sayyedia Zeinab neighborhood in Cairo has a good reputation. “His two sisters, two brothers, and his late father are all known of being decent people and their records are clean,” the source added.

C. P. Ravindran adds from Doha: Ali was among the audience at Doha Players during the first half of a Shakespeare comedy play.

He was seated in the last row of the theater and was recognized by a female colleague from Qatar Petroleum, according to local Arabic newspaper Arrayah. Reem Mohamed Behzad, Arrayah said, noticed a man sitting alone in the back row with a gloomy face. “She immediately recognized him as her colleague in QP.”

When the intermission came and as most of the audience came out of the theater for refreshments, Reem still noticed the man sitting there. But when everybody returned to the hall after the intermission, Reem was surprised to notice that the man had disappeared, obviously to return to bomb the place. A Cairo-based website, Elakhbar, said Ali was born in June 1966.

A committee at Doha’s government-run Hamad Medical Corporation has started giving counseling to some members of the cast of Twelfth Night and audience who were in the theater at the time of the blast which also left 12 people injured.