THE family of a heroic Afghan Australian killed by a terrorist suicide bomber is furious that the man’s grandson has been mistakenly labelled a “teenage terrorist” by Fairfax Media. Close relatives of the teenager pictured on the front pages of The Age and Sydney Morning Herald today are demanding an explanation and apology for what they call a stupid and avoidable error. “This isn’t right – they should have checked with someone in the Afghani community,” a close relative told the Herald Sun. The youth pictured beside the headline “Teenage Terrorist” in coverage of the Endeavour Hills stabbings is the third son of a successful academic family highly respected in Australia’s Afghani community. He works in an outer suburban Hungry Jacks store three days a week to support his full time education at Minaret College in Springvale. Fairfax has since “unreservedly apologised” for the error. A statement said: “One of the photographs run on this website and Fairfax papers in relation to the death of Numan Haider was published in error. The young man in a suit was not Mr Haider, and we unreservedly apologise to him for the error. “The young man has no connection whatsoever with any extremist or terrorist group and we deeply regret any such inference arising from the publication of the photograph. The picture has been withdrawn from circulation.”The boy’s grandfather Hakim Taniwal was killed with a nephew and two others near Kabul in 2006, four years after he agreed to return from refuge in Australia to act as a Governor of a troubled province. The former university lecturer went against his family’s wishes by returning to the country where terrorists plotted to kill any moderate pro-Western leaders. It is believed that other members of the family have also bravely helped the Australian effort against the Taliban in Afghanistan. Now they are outraged by what they see as a careless dishonouring of the family when one Middle Eastern youth was confused with another in Facebook postings. “(The student) just goes to school at Minaret College and works for Hungry Jacks three days a week,” the angry relative said. “In his spare time he plays cricket.” He said dead terror suspect Numan Haider had gone to another school 10km away and to a different mosque. He said the student’s oldest brother is studying law and another brother studies optometry, in keeping with the family’s high academic standards. The three boys’ late grandfather Hakim Taniwal was a sociology professor before agreeing to return to Afghanistan in 2002 to act as a moderating influence to help Australia’s attempts to bring peace to the country. After Professor Taniwal was killed with his nephew, a driver and a bodyguard, the Washington Post described him as “the scholarly and soft-voiced governor … a political figure known for his skill at bringing together hostile groups in the country’s volatile tribal regions near the Pakistani border.” A spokesman for the Afghani Government described him as “a great patriot who had fought against violence and corruption.” In an interview in 2002 Taniwal said he had been reluctant to leave his family in Australia but wanted to help establish a strong democratic government after years of bloodshed and repression in Afghanistan. “I am not a commander. I am a peaceful man, and I want to resolve this peacefully. . . . I want to finish the Kalashnikov culture,” he said. Now his grandson is nervous about appearing in public in Australia because he has been wrongly labelled a terrorist.
Posted on: Thu, 25 Sep 2014 05:23:51 +0000
Trending Topics
© 2015