The white marble tombstone stands out in the graveyard of this sleepy Pakistani village. Not just because it dwarfs the others, but also because of the name it carries: Shehzad Tanweer.
Encircled by a Koranic verse, the engraved epitaph continues: "Born December 15, 1982, died July 7, 2005, son of Mohammed Mumtaz Tanweer." Three clay flower pots surround the headstone, sprouting withered branches and leaves.
In Samundari, Tanweer is neither villain nor martyr, merely a victim. Residents still refuse to believe that the sporty 22-year-old was one of the four young suicide bombers who killed 52 people in London a year ago.
"My nephew was not involved in any violence," his uncle Tahir Pervaiz told Agence France Presse in an interview near the huge family home where he says Tanweer stayed from December 2004 to February last year.
Born and bred in Britain, Tan-weer made several trips to his ancestral home in the Samundari neighborhood of Kot Sharif. Re-sidents remember him as a shy, good-natured boy from a respectable family that migrated decades ago.
A world away from Beeston in north England, where Tanweer lived, it is accessible only by a narrow tree-lined lane that cuts through the wheat and maize fields of Punjab Province.
Most of the 4,000 people living in Kot Sharif have close relatives who have lived and worked in Britain for a long time and many of them, like Tanweer's parents, were granted British nationality.
So why, they ask, would he have detonated a bomb on a Circle Line Underground train between Aldgate and Liverpool Street stations that killed seven people including himself and wounded more than 100?
"The allegation that he carried out the bombing is wrong. He was pure and innocent and never showed any intention to be violent and kill other people," said Pervaiz, Tanweer's maternal uncle.
Tanweer was sick for most of the time he spent in the dusty village some 45km from the industrial city of Faisalabad, he added.
Many residents, still bitter about media intrusion immediately after the London attacks, refused to talk. But one, Mohammad Sagheer, said Tanweer would sometimes play cricket, the national obsession in Pakistan.
"If he stayed here for three months, I think he was seen only five or six times playing cricket with local boys," he said.
At the funeral locals denied Tanweer's guilt and they still do.
Yet the official account puts Tanweer firmly in the frame not just as one of the bombers but also as a link between the cell of young British Muslims and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.
His movements in Pakistan in particular remain a focal point of the continuing investigation into the suicide attacks.
Pakistani authorities say that Tanweer came to Pakistan along with the lead bomber, Mohammed Sidique Khan, in November 2004. Security officials say soon afterwards they registered at a hardline Sunni Muslim preaching center in the eastern city of Lahore, but stayed only for a day.
Other reports say the pair studied at a madrasah (Islamic religious school) linked to a Pakistani militant group with ties to al-Qaeda.
Under pressure from London in the aftermath of the bombs, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf last year ordered all foreign students at madrasah to leave the country, although the crackdown has been patchy.
Meanwhile in May a British official report said that Tanweer and Khan, likely had contacts with al-Qaeda and received "operational training."
British Home Secretary John Reid told parliament after the release of the report that Khan and Tanweer were "likely to have met al-Qaeda figures" during their visit to Pakistan.
The details of those contacts remain unknown, although Khan was said to have received around 200 calls from Pakistan in the run-up to the attacks.
"We are still in the dark about exactly what Tanweer and Khan did when they were in Pakistan," a security official said on condition of anonymity.
In Samundari the memory of Tanweer is still as a quiet, decent young man, said Amin Badal, a former local councilor.
"He came to the village rarely. Last time he was here he did not mingle with many people. I saw him sometimes offering prayers in the village mosque," he said.
"We are personally hurt that one our boys has been portrayed as a killer," he said.
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