Why one teenager tried to blow himself up By DOUGLAS DAVIS LONDON
The 15-year-old would-be suicide bomber who was caught at the Erez crossing last March wearing a belt containing almost nine kilograms of explosives and nails had embarked on the mission to avenge the death of a friend – and to skip school.
Interviewed at a prison in northern Israel, Hussam Abdo was asked by a BBC correspondent why he had undertaken the mission.
"The reason was because my friend was killed," he said. "The second reason I did it is because I didn't want to go to school... My parents forced me to go to school and I didn't want to go. So I used to go there and run away.
"Then I had problems with the teachers. The principal took me to the police because I got into a fight with the teachers."
When he set off on his suicide mission, he said, he was not afraid to die: "I was a little bit nervous. But not to the point that I was very scared. I was kind of normal."
"I'm not afraid of death," he explained. "Nobody is going to live forever. We're all going to die." On the morning of the intended attack, he said, he prayed, kissed his mother good-bye and told her he was going to school. He did not tell her his real intentions because "she wouldn't have let me leave the house. She'd have yelled at me, cried and told me not to do it." Then, at 6 a.m., he went to a friend's house. "He took me to some guys in Nablus. I sat with them and spoke to them." Then he set off for the checkpoint.
"I got to the checkpoint at 1 p.m. The army caught me at 1:30 p.m. I stayed with the soldiers at the checkpoint till 9 p.m. and then they took me to the military base."
Asked what his target had been, Abdo said they had told him to "blow yourself up at the checkpoint. They showed me a videotape of it."
Had he understood that he would have been a mass murderer, causing suffering and grief? "Yes. Just like they came and caused our parents sadness and suffering they too should feel this. Just like we feel this, they should also feel it."
When he was captured, he said, "the soldiers came to me and there were many of them so I was a bit scared. I was afraid that they would beat me but I wasn't afraid that they'd shoot me. They were nice to me. They treated me well."
Abdo decided to become a suicide bomber while chatting to a friend: "He comes to me and says, 'Can you find me a martyr bomber?' Then I told him, 'I'll do it.' My friend says, 'Really?' and I answer, 'Yes, I'll do it.'
"So he took me to see another guy. The guy's name was Wael. He was from Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades. He was 21.
"Then he took me to another guy who put the bomb belt on me and they took pictures of me. The pictures were on the day before.
"Of course, he asked me a lot of questions. He asked me who I was and why I wanted to do this. I answered all of his questions. I told him I wanted to do it because of my friend who was killed and he agreed to let me do it."
Abdo said he was told that after the mission, soldiers would demolish the family home, but he was promised that "we'll stand by your parents and rebuild your house and give them money."
"Some teenagers want to be footballers, others want to be singers. You wanted to be a suicide bomber. Why?" asked the interviewer.
"It's not suicide – it's martyrdom," replied Abdo. "I would become a martyr and go to my God. It's better than being a singer or a footballer. It's better than everything."
But he said he thanked God that the mission did not succeed because "God doesn't want me to die." Asked how he now felt about the people who sent him, he replied: "I feel normal. One of them is my friend and he will stay my friend because, just like me, he's also in prison."
He said he would stop others of his age from suicide bombings "because if he got caught he would go to prison and it's not a nice place and he shouldn't be away from his parents." He himself would not do it again, for the same reason.
And, he said: "In the end there'll be peace." When he gets out of prison, he added, "I want to go home and be with my parents and work in my father's shop."
