First witness to claim Khan blew himself on tube

[Ally]

surprised no one else picked up on this, was in Saturday's paper and again the victim Danny Biddle had his legs blown off.

24 September 2005
THE TUBE BOMBER STARED ME STRAIGHT IN THE EYES AS HE SET OFF THE EXPLOSION THAT BLEW MY LEGS AWAY
7/7 VICTIM SPEAKS
Exclusive By Stephanie Busari

A JULY 7 victim yesterday told how Tube bomber Mohammed Sidique Khan stared at him from 10ft away as he blew up the train.

Danny Biddle, 26, lost both legs and an eye and spent four weeks in a coma after the explosion at Edgware Road.

And recounting the horror from his hospital bed for the first time, he said: "I remember everything so vividly.

"People carry rucksacks on the Underground every day, so Khan didn't look out of place at all.

"He was sitting by the first door of the train and I was standing about 10ft away.

"I noticed him reaching into his bag and he didn't say or do anything. He wasn't agitated or fidgety, he was very calm.


"He looked at me and looked around the carriage. Then he pulled some sort of cord."

Six innocent people were killed there and another 46 in the three other blasts across London.


Danny, travelling to work, was hurled out of the carriage and ended up on his back with its doors crushing his legs.

He said: "The shock and adrenalin quickly set in and I prepared to die. I could see the carnage in the carriage and knew that people had been killed.


"I was covered in soot and blood. I reached up to touch my head and my forehead flapped down into my eyes and I could feel my skull.


"I thought, 'No one's going to find you here,' but I still screamed for help." He was saved by a former South African Army officer who gave him first aid.


Danny said: "He was a huge guy. He lifted the train doors off my legs and put a tourniquet on to stop the bleeding.


"He had a small torch and kept shining it in my face to keep me awake and asking me questions about myself.


"This guy had appeared out of nowhere. He later told me he had to crawl under the carriage that was blown up. He's my hero and will be until the day I die."


Danny, of Romford, Essex, later needed 70 pints of blood in hospital and 125 stitches.


The building site manager also suffered three heart attacks in his first week as well as having kidney failure and a ruptured spleen.


He also needed eight £1 coins and a set of keys surgically removed from his thigh after they became embedded there.


But he was sickened when earlier this month, as he lay recovering, he watched a televised video of teaching assistant Khan, 30, justifying attacks on Britain.


Danny, at St Mary's Hospital in Paddington, West London, fumed: "My reaction was utter disbelief."


He added: "I was face-to-face with the man who changed my life and there's nothing that can be done to get justice because he blew himself up.


"But I hope he rots in hell and never makes it to the paradise he longs for."


He also bitterly attacked Samantha Lewthwaite, the 21-year-old widow of King's Cross Tube bomber Jermaine Lindsay, for telling a newspaper she too was a "victim".


He said: "It's disgusting. It turns my stomach."


The former keen sportsman also reflected sombrely on the way his life has been torn apart. "I had a very active job that I loved but now won't even be allowed on a building site in a wheelchair," he said.


"I used to play football three times a week and tried to go to the gym twice a week.


"I have plenty of dreams in which I still have legs. I was 6ft 4in, now I'm 5ft nothing.


"I was used to people looking up at me, now I have to look up to them."


Fiancee Lisa, 25, will help care for him, as will his parents Pauline, 55, and John, 57, who have returned to the UK from their retirement home in Spain. His brother Tony, 32, will also move back from New York to be closer to him.


Yet Danny counts himself lucky to be alive.


He said: "I could have been brain-damaged. Anything could have happened.


"Sometimes I feel guilty about surviving. I ask myself, 'Why me? Why did I survive and the other six didn't?'"


Now he is determined to battle through his ordeal and fulfil his dreams of marrying Lisa. He vowed: "You can't just cave in and say, 'My life is over'. You just have to get on with it.


"I will get back as much of my life as I can. I've come this far - I could've given up. It's not going to happen overnight but I'll give it everything.


"My three goals are to walk my lady up the aisle, to have a dance with her and to walk back into this hospital to thank the doctors who saved my life."
http://www.mirror.co.uk/archive/archive/tm_objectid=16169167%26method= full%26siteid=94762-name_page.html
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What did people think about Gary Holness's appearance on Richard & Judy?
Has anyone coma across a victim who lost arms instead of legs. If the bomb exploded inside the train would the windows not all blow out. However many sustained glass wounds from the windows blowing into the carriage. But I'm no bomb expert.