THE spotlight falls tonight on Huddersfield July 7 suicide bomber Jermaine Lindsay.

A new documentary series will focus on the former Rawthorpe High School student who became one of the four suicide bombers to claim 52 lives.

Lindsay, 19, changed from a bright, sports-loving teenager to a man obsessed with religion and with politics.

Now Generation Jihad, which starts tonight on BBC2 (9pm), will examine his life and that of other young Muslim terrorists.

They include Hamaad Munshi, of Dewsbury, who at 15 turned from a well-educated child to Britain’s youngest convicted terrorist.

Investigator Peter Taylor examines the terrorist threat from young Muslim extremists radicalised on the internet.

He said: “Although they represent a tiny minority of the Muslim community some would argue they now constitute the single biggest threat to our national security.”

The case of Lindsay was a bizarre one.

The son of Maryam McLeod, he arrived in Huddersfield from Jamaica at the age of one and lived with his family in Newsome.

He attended Stile Common Infants School but later moved to Town Avenue, Leeds Road, and switched to Rawthorpe Junior School.

As a teenager, he attended Rawthorpe High School and fellow pupils – later dreadfully shocked by his role in the bombings – regarded him as a great, popular student.

At 15 Lindsay was bright, doing well in his lessons and very popular.

He was also a brilliant sportsman, especially in athletics and soccer.

But when he returned for his final year at the school, he had changed.

He had changed his name from Jermaine Lindsay to Jermaine Jahal and was obsessed by religion and politics.

He would pray several times a day in the prayer room at the school and studied Urdu. Friends described him as solemn and serious.

After leaving school, he moved to Aylesbury and married Samantha Lewthwaite, who had his child.

It was from there that he made his murderous journey to London on July 7, 2005, with three other Yorkshire bombers to kill.

Lindsay detonated his bomb on the Piccadilly Line near Kings Cross, killing 26 innocent people.

In the series, Taylor interviews in depth two members of “Generation Jihad”, Bilal Mohammed and Rizwan Ditta, also from West Yorkshire, who have been convicted under Britain’s anti-terror laws.

He delves into the history of British Islam and discovers a group that has shed the moderate faith which their parents brought to this country and adopted a brand of Islam imported from the Middle East which they believe compels them to stand apart from Britain and its values.

He said: “But being a radical Islamist does not make you a terrorist.

“As a teenager Umar Abdulmutallab, the young Nigerian who tried to blow up a plane over Detroit on Christmas day, recorded his feelings of isolation and loneliness in internet postings.

“I spoke to people who knew Lindsay well. A similar picture emerges of a young man cut off from society and positive male role models.”

The series also claims the British Government is spending £140m trying to counter radicalisation in the UK – it’s a policy called Prevent.

Sir Norman Bettison, Chief Constable of West Yorkshire believes that it will be with us for many years to come.

He said: “I think this is generational. I think we woke up as a society in 2005 to the idea that people were prepared to commit suicide and carry out atrocities in Britain because of the perversion of an ideology.

“I think it’s a generation of treatment to prevent the infection spreading, and I think that will take us probably 20 years.”