A BRITISH suicide bomber sent a series of emotional farewell messages to his wife and family a week before he intended to blow himself up in a crowded Tel Aviv bar, the Old Bailey was told yesterday.

Omar Sharif, 27, e-mailed his wife, Tahira Tabassum, 27, in Derby asking her to look after their three children and pray that Allah would accept him as a martyr.

He cautioned his brother, Zahid, 37, and sister, Parveen, 36, that they would face difficult times and should get rid of any “problematic material” in their homes. Sharif ended his e-mails with the instructions to his family that they should delete his messages.

Jonathan Laidlaw, for the prosecution, told a jury that Sharif’s wife, brother and sister could not have understood the e-mails unless they knew what he was intending to do.

All three are charged with failing to disclose information to the police that could have prevented a terrorist attack and the loss of lives. The charge was introduced after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and this is the first time it has been used.

Far from informing the police, Parveen Sharif replied to her brother, allegedly trying to encourage him. She wrote: “We all have to be firm and focused with reality as time is slipping away, and there really is no time to be weak and emotional.”

Parveen Sharif was further charged with inciting her brother to carry out a terrorist attack. “Parveen was encouraging her brother to go through with the bombing,” Mr Laidlaw said.

“In the days before the attack, when even the most committed militant and radical of young men may suffer some doubt as to the course upon which he had embarked, she was seeking to strengthen his resolve, to reassure him and she was offering him her support.”

The e-mails were exchanged on April 22 and 23 last year. Sharif is thought to have sent his messages from somewhere in the Palestinian territories, probably the West Bank.

His sister replied using a friend’s computer in Nottingham. A week later, in the early hours of April 30, Sharif and Asif Hanif, 22, from Hounslow, West London, approached Mike’s Place, a seafront bar in the Israeli city.

They waited for the bar to fill up with people before attempting to enter and detonate the “suicide vests” strapped to their bodies.

Hanif’s exploded, killing himself and three other people and wounding 65 more. Sharif’s failed to explode and he discarded the explosives as he ran away.

It was the first time that Hamas, the Palestinian terror group, had used foreigners to carry out a suicide bombing.

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