Family of alleged Times Square bomber in seclusion

MOHIB BANDA, Pakistan - On a bright spring day in 1976, a Pakistani flight instructor watched approvingly as his Royal Air Force trainees, flying in formation over the English countryside, wrote out "Five-O" in perfect trailer smoke. It was Queen Elizabeth II's 50th birthday, and one of the proudest moments of Bahar ul-Haq's life.

Today Haq, 70, a retired air vice marshal in Pakistan's air force, is hiding in humiliation and shock, secluded somewhere in the northwestern city of Peshawar. His younger son, Faisal Shahzad, whom friends say he sent to the United States to study and to escape Pakistan's problems, stands accused of attempting to explode a bomb in Times Square.

Pakistani investigators are poring through family files and quizzing neighbors. Television crews have mobbed the lanes of this northwestern village where Haq grew up and have camped outside his home in Peshawar. International news programs have shown his son's bearded face over and over, next to shots of the sport-utility vehicle that held the homemade bomb in Manhattan.

Haq "is very, very depressed. He is an honorable, patriotic man who worked hard to rise in the air force and raise his children cleanly. Now his family's reputation has been destroyed," said Hajji Sherzada, a lifelong friend who said he has spoken to him by phone several times since the son's arrest last week. "Every time his wife gets on the phone, she just cries."

Provincial authorities said Sunday that Haq was in "protective custody," but relatives said he and his wife are in seclusion to avoid publicity.

Friends, relatives and air force colleagues of Haq's, interviewed in several northwestern communities and Islamabad this week, said they could make no sense of his son's alleged actions or possible conversion to radical Islam.

Shahzad, 30, grew up in a stable community where most people were educated and many were part of Pakistan's close-knit military world.

His father, an accomplished pilot, rose from humble village roots to the top ranks of the air force, serving stints in Britain and Saudi Arabia. Several other family members were air force officers, including Shahzad's maternal grandfather.

Haq was invited to teach at an air academy in England for several years. Described as a strict and protective father, he raised his children to become civilian professionals: Faisal's older brother is an engineer in Canada, and a sister is a physician.

Shirzada Bacha, a maternal uncle of Shahzad's, said that if Haq had suspected that his son was involved in extremist activities, he would have "killed him in the house."

Iftikhar Ahmed, 54, a retired air force officer and nephew of Haq's, said he followed Shahzad's upbringing closely.

"We sent a clean and innocent boy to America," Ahmed said with bitterness. "If he went bad in America, why don't you blame America instead of his family and his country?"