Abdul Waheed Majeed

Abdul Waheed Majeed (19722014) was a British-Pakistani man from Crawley in West Sussex who carried out a suicide bombing at the gates of a prison in Aleppo, Syria on February 6, 2014. He was a member of Al-Nusra Front, the tenth British national to die in the Syrian civil war, and the first British national to carry out a suicide attack in Syria.

Life in Britain Majeed, who went by his middle name, was born and raised in England, the son of Pakistani immigrants. He had one brother and one sister. He attended Hazelwick School as a boy. He reportedly took his Muslim faith seriously.

As an adult, he entered into an arranged marriage with a woman from Pakistan. At the time of his death, Majeed's two sons were in their teens, and he had a twelve-year-old daughter. Majeed's brother stated Majeed's links to Bakri and Al-Muhajiroun had been exaggerated. He stated his brother had chauffeured Bakri a few times and attended some talks organized by Al-Muhajiroun, but stopped going because he thought their ideas were too extremist. After their arrival, the two men stayed to help refugees at the Turkish-Syrian border. Other members of the Langley Green Mosque went to Syria in December 2013 and met Majeed, who was working in a refugee camp at the time, and tried to persuade him to come home, but he refused. The last time he spoke to them, his brother stated their conversation was routine. Majeed's father asked him when he would be returning home, and he said he would be back in April. Six days later, he carried out the suicide bombing.

Al-Nusra Front released a video showing Majeed, whom thery referred to by the nom de guerre Abu Suleiman al-Baritani, standing near an armored dump truck packed with explosives, talking to other jihadists. When he was asked to make a statement, Majeed declined and said, "It should come from the heart and I can't do it." The video showed the dump truck driving towards the prison, the sounds of gunfire breaking out, and a blast as the truck exploded. A friend of his in Syria wrote on his Twitter page that the attack had been carried out in order to liberate the prisoners. Hundreds of prisoners reportedly escaped and 300 people were killed in the firefight between Al-Nusra fighters and Syrian government forces.

Majeed's uncle stated he had never shown any signs of extremist beliefs before his departure from England, and that the family would not have let him go if they had known he was going to carry out a suicide attack. Majeed's brother believes he became radicalized by reports of the torture, starvation and executions that had occurred in the prisons under Bashar al-Assad's regime, and that this was what prompted him to join Al-Nusra Front. He said, "We feel that if he hadn't got a beard and was white and wearing a uniform with a crown on his arm with a regiment number, he would have been awarded the posthumous Victoria Cross. Instead Waheed is called a terrorist." His brother said Majeed's children felt "no shame about what he did" because he had "martyred himself for people he did not know."