THE family of a Melbourne teenager wrongly identified by Fairfax Media as terrorism suspect Numan Haider are planning to sue.

The Age newspaper will launch an internal review after Abu Bakar Alam, 19, was labelled a “teenage terrorist” while his family said they had “big concerns” for their safety.

The teen’s father, Sher Alam, said: “I will speak to my lawyer and I will ask my lawyer what are my rights, what are their rights.

“(We) will go to court.

“I have big concerns for my family, for my children and for my son. They did this thing wrong and I’m asking and seeking my rights.

“We are innocent, we are not terrorists.”

The teenager said he was afraid to leave his home and was “not really OK” after being wrongly pictured on the front pages of The Age and Sydney Morning Herald in their coverage of the Endeavour Hills police shooting.

His grandfather was a heroic Afghan-Australian killed by a terrorist suicide bomber.

“I’m gutted,” Abu Bakar Alam told 3AW yesterday.

“This is going to take a while, but we’re going to sit down as a family and work out what’s going to be the best for us.

“And for my future. This is not something small. This is going to affect my future as well.”

The Age editor-in-chief Andrew Holden said Fairfax Media had spoken with the family and explained the error was caused by “crossed wires”.

“There will be a review into the way we verify photos downloaded from Facebook,” he said.

Mr Alam said the family saw his son’s picture on social media labelled by the newspaper as Numan Haider, the terror suspect, 18, shot dead by police after stabbing two officers on Tuesday.

“Someone called me and said ‘What happened to your son?’ I said, ‘My son is alive, who said my son is a terrorist?’” Mr Alam said.

“This morning he was crying, he said, ‘With this now how can I go out and face people?’

“We just came (to Australia) to survive and here again we are facing the same situation that we ran away from there, now here this newspaper and people who publish this news have introduced my family to this community as terrorists.”

The teenager’s grandfather Hakim Taniwal was killed with a nephew and two others near Kabul in 2006, four years after he agreed to return from refuge in Australia to act as a governor of a troubled province.

The former university lecturer went against his family’s wishes by returning to the country where

terrorists plotted to kill any moderate pro-Western leaders. It is believed that other members of the family have also bravely helped the Australian effort against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Now they are outraged by what they see as a careless dishonouring of the family when one Middle Eastern youth was confused with another in Facebook postings.

Fairfax has “unreservedly apologised” for the error.

A statement said: “One of the photographs run on this website and Fairfax papers in relation to the death of Numan Haider was published in error. The young man in a suit was not Mr Haider, and we unreservedly apologise to him for the error.

“The young man has no connection whatsoever with any extremist or terrorist group and we deeply regret any such inference arising from the publication of the photograph. The picture has been withdrawn from circulation.”

Abu Bakar Alam is the third son of a successful academic family highly respected in Australia’s Afghani community. He plays cricket in his spare time and works in an outer suburban Hungry Jack’s store three days a week to support his full time education at Minaret College in Springvale.

It’s understood dead terror suspect Numan Haider had gone to another school 10km away and to a different mosque.

A relative said Abu Bakar Alam’s oldest brother is studying law and another brother studies optometry, in keeping with the family’s high academic standards.

The three boys’ late grandfather Hakim Taniwal was a sociology professor before agreeing to return to Afghanistan in 2002 to act as a moderating influence to help Australia’s attempts to bring peace to the country.

After Professor Taniwal was killed with his nephew, a driver and a bodyguard, the Washington Post described him as “the scholarly and soft-voiced governor … a political figure known for his skill at bringing together hostile groups in the country’s volatile tribal regions near the Pakistani border.”

A spokesman for the Afghani Government described him as “a great patriot who had fought against violence and corruption.”

In an interview in 2002, Taniwal said he had been reluctant to leave his family in Australia but wanted to help establish a strong democratic government after years of bloodshed and repression in Afghanistan.

“I am not a commander. I am a peaceful man, and I want to resolve this peacefully ... I want to finish the Kalashnikov culture,” he said.

Now his grandson is nervous about appearing in public in Australia because he has been wrongly labelled a terrorist.