Friends and neighbours of a former Bradford charity shop manager today said they were shocked to hear their quiet and gentle neighbour was being held on suspicion of terrorism.

Aibran Sattar was a regular visitor to the home of Mohammed Yaqub, who is being held in a Peshawar military prison and being questioned about links with al-Qaeda boss Osama bin Laden.

But according to Mr Sattar, 23, his neighbour lived a spartan, modest and simple life in Saltburn Place, Heaton, after marrying at Bradford Register Office.

"He was a very strict Muslim, a very decent man," Mr Sattar said.

Mohammed Yaqub was James Alexander McLintock before he converted to Islam while studying zoology at Dundee University.

And Mr Sattar remembers the Scot well from the time he lived in Bradford and worked as a charity shop manager.

He said: "He would organise weekly religious sessions at his home every Thursday evening and speakers from all over would come.

"I used to go to his house a lot and I always found him to be polite and well spoken.

"He knew a lot about Islam, he was very learned and knowledgeable.

"I never saw his wife but when they had their second baby they distributed mitthai (Asian sweets) to the neighbourhood.

"They were very simple. Yaqub didn't have a television and we all sat on the floor, just very basic."

Yaqub was said to have fought in Afghanistan for the Mujahedin rebels against the Russians in the 1980s, but Mr Sattar said he had no idea that his neighbour had been a resistance fighter.

"He never spoke about that.

I certainly don't remember anyone talking about that," he said.

"He was striking because of his looks, we all knew he was a convert, but the family kept themselves to themselves. As far as I knew he only went out to go to mosque and his wife didn't go out at all."

The 37-year-old is being held by the Pakistani authorities in Peshawar for alleged terrorist links.

Yaqub and his Pakistani wife, Soffia Begum, married in June 1995 at Bradford register office but moved out of the Saltburn Place home, which they rented, more than a year ago.

Today a spokesman for the Foreign Office said they had not received any information from the Pakistani authorities about his current status.

"All the information we have at the moment is what we are reading in the Press. We have not been contacted by anyone from Mr McLintock's family or his wife."