The Western-educated bomber who botched Sri Lanka hotel attack

Jameel like other bombers was educated family man who was radicalized after travelling abroad

COLOMBO: His target was the breakfast buffet at the Taj Samudra, a luxury hotel on Colombo's seafront. Instead, he ended up detonating his explosive device in a budget motel by the city's zoo, killing a couple who had arrived only half an hour earlier.

Abdul Latheef Mohamed Jameel, who was educated in Australia
and Britain, was the only attacker out of the eight Sri Lankans
pledging allegiance to Islamic State who failed to hit his intended target in the series of Easter Sunday attacks that killed at least 253, according to police.

People who knew him said Jameel, like many of the other bombers, was an educated family man who was radicalized after travelling abroad, though an attempt to reach Syria failed in 2014, according to a Sri Lankan intelligence source.

The United States' invasion of Iraq was a major turning point in Jameel's views, people who knew him said. An executive at the Taj familiar with some of the details of what happened on Easter Sunday, meanwhile, said Jameel most probably entered the hotel without being searched, but that his bomb failed to go off, in what the employee called a "miraculous escape" for its hundreds of guests.

After his failed attempt at the Taj, he checked in at the
New Tropical Inn some 10 km (6 miles) away. He then left for
several hours as a huge manhunt was being launched by
authorities to catch those involved who were still alive, only
to return later and detonate his device, according to the owner
of the motel.

PRIVILEGED UPBRINGING

Jameel, 37, was born in Kandy, the sixth child in a tea trading family of seven, according to interviews with three people who knew him well, all of whom declined to be named due to the ongoing police investigation. He was educated at the private Gampola International School in Kandy, a lush hilltown in the centre of the country.

The family's relative wealth allowed him to travel and live abroad. He studied engineering at Kingston University, southwest of London, for a year in 2006, according to two sources close to the family and two European intelligence officials.

The university declined to comment on his time there. He returned to Sri Lanka, where he married and had his first of four children, before moving to Australia for four years in 2009. It was during this time he became radicalized, said those who knew him.