Jermaine or Germaine Lindsay’s mother, who once lived in Cleveland has been found in Grenada. “For Jamaican native, life path led from success to extremism” From the Boston Globe, with thanks to Mary Beth
ST. GEORGE’S, Grenada — In the two weeks since 19-year-old Germaine Lindsay blew himself up in a London subway, taking 26 other lives with him, investigators and loved ones have been left with a central mystery: What led a rising athletic and academic star to become one of Western Europe’s first suicide bombers?
”I can’t believe it,” Maryam McLeod Ismaiyl, his grieving mother, a Dorchester resident, said yesterday. ”I have so many questions, and I do not know if I will ever receive the answers.”
”Jamal, as he would love to be called, was the best son I could have ever hoped for,” she told reporters in the capital of the Caribbean island, where she is staying for the summer with her husband’s family. ”I am still in shock and know not how to grieve for my son. Therefore, I grieve first for the victims.”
Lindsay’s life journey that ended on the subway train near King’s Cross station took some crucial turns. He converted to Islam at the age of 15, following his mother’s lead, and during high school he drew on his faith to shine as a student and athlete. But he ended up in a series of dead-end jobs after his mother remarried and moved to the United States. And then his religion took him in a radical direction.
The three others suspected in the coordinated bombings July 7 that killed at least 52 commuters, in addition to the bombers, were of Pakistani descent. They traveled there last year for training and support. But Lindsay was born in Jamaica, and there is no evidence so far that he took such a trip. His main tie with his fellow bombers appears to have been a fervent and ultimately deadly fanaticism that developed over the past two years…