July 7 bomber's widow 'has lost her identity'

The widow of the "ringleader" of the July 7 bombings described last night how she had to come to terms with her husband's death, the fact that he had killed innocent people, and the miscarriage of their child all in one day.

Hasina Patel, wife of Mohammad Sidique Khan, who killed six in a suicide attack at London's Edgware Road Tube station in 2005, also told of how she had been treated as "guilty until proven innocent" over the bombings. She said she had lost some faith in the police.

Ms Patel was giving her first interview since the bombings, and her husband's death. Since then, she said: "I feel like I've lost my own identity. All people know me as - his wife. And I think that's all people judge me as."

Asked if she was "happy" being a Muslim in the UK today, she told Sky News: "I am. When I was younger, I've always liked living here and never had an issue. What's happened recently - I have lost a bit more faith in the police. The only thing is I am a bit scared of the police. It makes me uneasy if I felt my daughter needed to have her own identity, if people find out... if her life is difficult then. But otherwise I'm quite happy to live here."

"It has been really, really difficult," she added. "I felt quite isolated at times really from friends and family. Generally people are unsure what's going on, what happened was so huge. I don't really blame people but it has been quite a lonely time."

A British-born Muslim from Drewsbury, Yorkshire, Khan, aged 30, along with Shehzad Tanweer, 22, Germaine Lindsay, 19, and Hasib Hussain, 18, carried out the attacks which killed 52 innocent bystanders and injured more than 700. He blew himself up at Edgware Road tube station along with three others.

The couple met at Leeds Metropolitan University and in 2004 married and had a daughter. Asked about her husband, Ms Patel said: "It is like two different people, I can't link the two things together at all. I try and I try to piece things together in my head but I don't know, I'm still trying to come to terms with it myself."

On the morning of the bombings, Ms Patel had to deal with the added horror of learning she had lost a baby. She said: "When I had the scan, the midwife said it seems like the baby has stopped growing ... she told me I'd lost the baby."

Two days previously she had gone to the hospital with Khan, experiencing bleeding, but thought she was OK. "When he dropped me off at home, that was the last time I saw him," she said. "He said he was just going out to see his friends."

It took two years for police to finally show Ms Patel her husband's will, along with a handwritten note with around £400. In the note, he said he knew the money was not much but she could use it to buy toys for "the children", not having realised his wife had miscarried. The note finally proved Ms Patel's innocence of the attacks.

Ms Patel was arrested in May this year for "commissioning, preparing or instigating acts of terrorism," and held without trial for a week. Last night, she appealed directly to Gordon Brown to reconsider extending police powers to detain without trial. On the Prime Minister's plans to allow police to question suspects for up to 56 days, Ms Patel, who is of Indian descent, said: I think for anyone who's experienced it - like I now have - then you know how difficult it is and it's a punishment in itself."