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The widow of the ringleader of the July 7 suicide bombings still prays for her husband who, she believes, was a good man until he was brainwashed.

In her first interview since the attacks, Hasina Patel, who was married to Mohammad Sidique Khan for eight years, said that she had “full sympathy” with the bomb victims.

Speaking to Sky News, Ms Patel said she could not believe that the man she married could have been so “cold and calculated” to have carried out the attacks that killed 52 people and injured more than 700.

She also disclosed that police had told her recently that Khan, 32, had left her £400 to buy toys for their children, not knowing that she had miscarried on the morning of the bombings.

Ms Patel, 29, said: “I feel there was a good person in there and I just hope that, you know . . . yes, I just hope and I pray for him because I feel there was a good person in there but feel he was probably misled and brainwashed by the wrong people.”

In the in-depth conversation, to be broadcast today, Ms Patel said that she made desperate attempts to contact Khan on July 6, 2005, because she feared that she was losing their second child. The next morning, as he prepared to blow himself up on a Circle Line train, she was on her way to hospital to have her fears confirmed.

“At 9 o’clock I left the house, obviously not knowing what had happened,” Ms Patel said. “I had tried to phone him to say, ‘Are you going to come for the scan’, and I kept trying to phone him, leaving messages on the Wednesday saying ‘I am still bleeding, something’s up’, and again on Thursday, I rang every day – Friday, Saturday, Sunday.”

Numbed and upset from losing her child, Ms Patel said that she made no connection between her absent husband and the carnage in London.

“I went home, I went back to my own house and put the TV on and saw that the bombings had happened, it was just all over the news. I just couldn’t believe it. You normally hear of things like this in America but, you know, London. And I was more worried, I was thinking about my miscarriage and things.”

Sky declined to say whether Ms Patel had been paid for the 40-minute interview. It was agreed that she should wear the niqab, or full face veil, to help to protect her identity.

Ms Patel fell in love with Khan in 1997 when they were students at Leeds Metropolitan University. “He seemed sensible and polite, a good family man and he came from a good family.”

During the eight years that she spent with him, he transformed from a moderate young man to one who was interested in religious fundamentalism and then active jihad. But she insisted that she had no idea he was involved with extremists.

“We were trying to be good Muslims and, in our religion, we are told that men and women have to be segregated. I never sat in the same room with his friends, he never sat in the same room as my friends, so it is a completely different life.”

She felt that Khan was becoming distant and they had argued frequently. “I didn’t really know what was going on. I knew there was something, like he seemed . . . I thought maybe it is a phase, maybe he is depressed, he is always out with his friends, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.”

It was on the Tuesday after the July 7 attacks that she first learnt from police that her husband had been the ringleader. “I can’t believe people can do that kind of thing. How you can be so calculated and cold and not have any emotions, how can people do that?”

She felt that she had lost her identity and would always be associated with the bombings. Antiterrorist police arrested her in May and questioned her for seven days about the attacks before releasing her without charge. She said that, during the police interviews, she was shown a will written by Khan.

“They showed me a will that they had found which was from Sidique and there were messages on there to me and my daughter and family and in general to the public and funeral arrangements.

“In my section of the will it said, ‘I am really sorry for all the lies and deceit. I hope you can forgive me and I hope you can try to understand why I did what I did. You have tried to be a good wife but I have deceived you’ – that kind of message.

“There was a section for my daughter as well and my daughter’s section just said, ‘I really love you, as a father I really love you and I want the best for you and make sure you are a good person, be a good Muslim and look after your mummy’ – that kind of thing.

“There was a handwritten note and some money found with it and it said on the note that ‘I’m leaving you this money, I know it’s not a lot’. It was about £400 and it said, ‘I am leaving you this money to buy some toys for the children’.

“It was really sad that he put ‘children’ because he obviously thought that the pregnancy had gone ahead and didn’t know it would just be me and my daughter left alone.”

Those they have left behind

— The widow of Jermaine Lindsay, the 7/7 Piccadilly Line bomber, said she “totally abhorred” her husband’s actions. Samantha Lethwaite said that her Jamaican-born husband’s behaviour began to change when he visited mosques in London and Luton

— Tahira Tabassum, widow of the failed suicide bomber Omar Khan Sharif, was cleared in 2004 of failing to tell police about his plan to attack Tel Aviv. Sharif, who is thought to have drowned in the Mediterranean, was alleged to have told his wife of his plans in an e-mail. Ms Tabassum, who had three children with Sharif, said: “If in later life they ask questions, I can tell them I never knew what was going to happen, and I never wanted [their] father taken away”

— Ramzi Mohammed, a 21/7 plotter, left a suicide note for his wife and three children: “My family don’t cry, but rejoice in happiness and love. What I have done [is] for the sake of Allah for he loves those who fight in his sake”

— Hussein Osman, also part of the 21/7 plot, lived with his wife and three children in Stockwell, South London. A torn-up picture of his bride was found in his abandoned rucksack after his bomb failed to explode at Shepherd’s Bush

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