One week before the 7/7 anniversary of the terrorist bombings of 2005.One day before London's Gay Pride Parade, on that route...
International probe as London police avert car bomb carnage
LONDON - British police on Friday defused a car bomb which could have caused carnage in London’s entertainment district, sparking a manhunt and probe into possible international links.
Amid widespread disruption in the capital, new Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the alert was a fresh warning of the threat faced by London, which next week marks the second anniversary of suicide attacks which killed 52 people.
The head of Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorism unit Peter Clarke would not speculate on who was behind the bomb -- comprising gas cylinders, petrol and nails -- found outside a nightclub near the Piccadilly Circus tourist trap and a host of bars, theatres and restaurants
But he said: ‘Even at this stage it is obvious that if this device had detonated, there could have been significant injury or loss of life.’
As the United States praised the British authorities for their swift action, Clarke said police had no warning of an attack and it was unclear if the nightclub was the target but there were similarities with previous plots.
Members of an Islamist-inspired gang were jailed for life earlier this year after plotting to attack a number of high-profile British targets, including London’s Ministry of Sound nightclub.
And a Muslim convert was put behind bars for 30 years here last November for plotting devastating attacks in London and New York, including a plan to detonate limousines packed with explosives at key landmarks.
A security source quoted by Britain’s Press Association news agency said it was ‘entirely possible’ the latest incident had overseas links as insurgents in Iraq had used similar methods, but they were keeping an open mind.
The alert triggered tightened security measures at the flagship Wimbledon tennis championships in south London and police cordoned off the main Park Lane thoroughfare after reports of a suspicious vehicle.
Scotland Yard said they were not making a link between it and the previous incident ‘at this stage’.
Later in the afternoon police were seen sealing a section of Fleet Street near London’s City financial district. A spokesman declined to comment immediately.
The events, which dominated British media Friday, was a baptism of fire not just for Brown, but for his Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, who was less than 24 hours into the role.
She met Brown in Downing Street and said afterwards: ‘We are currently facing the most serious and sustained threat to our security from international terrorism.
‘This latest incident reinforces the need for the public to remain vigilant and alert to the threat that we face at all times.’
Smith earlier chaired a meeting of the government’s emergency contigencies committee ‘COBRA’ and reported to Brown’s senior ministers at an extended cabinet meeting.
Clarke said an ambulance crew treating a person at the vast ‘Tiger, Tiger’ nightclub on The Haymarket street called in police explosives experts after noticing a metallic green Mercedes car giving off smoke at about 1:00 am.
Inside they found ‘significant quantities’ of petrol and a ‘large number’ of nails, he added.
Police sources said there was as much as 60 litres of petrol on the back seat of the car and in the boot (trunk).
As the car was taken away for forensic examination, Brown -- who took over as prime minister from Tony Blair Wednesday -- said the incident was a reminder of the ‘serious and continuous’ security threat facing Britain.
A hunt was under way for the driver with detectives expected to scour footage from closed circuit television cameras in streets surrounding The Haymarket, which is busy well into the early hours of the morning.
Cameras used to recognise car number plates for London’s traffic congestion charge would also be able to trace the route of the vehicle into the capital.The alert came ahead of the second anniversary of the July 7, 2005 attacks in London that killed 56 people, including four Islamist suicide bombers.
Britain has been on the second highest level of security alert -- ‘severe’ -- since the British Islamist extremist bombers detonated homemade bombs on three Underground trains and a bus two years ago.
Two of the bombers justified the actions because of Britain’s involvement in Iraq, where three British soldiers were killed in a roadside bomb attack Thursday.
The domestic intelligence service MI5 said a ‘severe’ threat level means there is a ‘serious and sustained threat from international terrorism to the UK and UK interests overseas’, particularly from Al Qaeda.
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Same men believed to be behind both U.K. plots
Officials: 2 suspects responsible for incidents; al-Qaida link investigated
GLASGOW, Scotland - The suspects who parked explosive-laden cars in London are believed to be the same two suspects who rammed a Jeep Cherokee into Glasgow airport last Friday, officials said Tuesday.
It was the latest theory in the quick-moving investigation, which British police turned their focus on Tuesday to a growing number of physicians with roots outside Britain — including a doctor seized at an Australian airport.
A British government security official said investigators were looking into the connection between the drivers of the vehicles in London and in Scotland, and NBC News confirmed that authorities, speaking on condition of anonymity, believed the same two men were behind both attacks.
Also Tuesday, a senior U.S. counterterrorism official told NBC News' Robert Windrem that British authorities suspect and are investigating a connection between the doctors involved in the London and Glasgow attacks and al-Qaida in Iraq.
"The concern is serious," the official said. "There are suspicious contacts, but they haven't yet put flesh on the bones."
The official hinted strongly that British attention is focused on Bilal Abdullah, the Iraqi diabetes doctor who was educated at the University of Baghdad and came to the U.K. in 2004. He worked in a hospital in Iraq, according to reports.
Senior U.S. intelligence officials told Windrem that British authorities now believe "the key of the key suspects" in the terrorist plot have now all been detained. The official stopped short of ruling our further arrests.
One official said the investigation moved quickly because the suspects did not cover their tracks. "These guys left behind a gold mine of evidence," the official said.
Police said at least four suspects had worked as doctors in Britain: two from India, one from Iraq, one from Jordan.
Staff at a hospital near Glasgow on Tuesday identified a fifth suspect — the man badly burned Saturday after trying to ram a Jeep loaded with gasoline canisters into the airport Saturday — as Khalid Ahmed, a Lebanese doctor on staff there.
The investigation into attempts to set off two car bombs Friday in London and to ram the Jeep loaded with gasoline into the Glasgow airport was expanding overseas and into Britain's medical community.
Arrested in Australia
One of the suspects from India, 27-year-old Muhammad Haneef, was arrested late Monday at the international airport in Brisbane, Australia, where he was trying to board a flight with a one-way ticket, the Australian attorney general said.
Authorities there also are questioning a second doctor, Australian Prime Minister John Howard said.
Haneef worked in 2005 as a temporary doctor at Halton Hospital in England, hospital spokesman Mark Shone said. Australian officials said he studied medicine in India before working in Liverpool, England, and then going to Australia.
Another suspect, a 26-year-old arrested Saturday in Liverpool, also practiced at Halton Hospital as well as at nearby Warrington Hospital, Shone said. He refused to identify him.
Police said two other men, ages 25 and 28, were arrested Sunday in residences at the Royal Alexandra Hospital near Glasgow. Staff identified them as a junior doctor and a medical student.
None of the suspects named so far are on U.S. terror watch lists that identify potential suspects, according to a senior U.S. counterterror official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
Pakistan and several other nations have been asked to check possible links with the suspects, a British security official said. British-born terrorists behind the 2005 London transit bombings and other thwarted bomb plots have had ties to terror training camps and foreign radicals in Pakistan.
'No specific information'
Amid increased security at British airports, train stations and on city streets, two men attempting to buy gasoline canisters at an industrial estate were arrested in Blackburn, northern England, under anti-terrorism laws.
Cameron Mason, managing director of Barcode Logistics, a local business, said the men had arrived to collect about eight large gasoline canisters left outside a building.
British officials said it was too early to say if the men were linked to the London and Glasgow attacks.
Precautions
In Glasgow, a bomb disposal team carried out a controlled explosion on a suspicious car parked outside a mosque early Tuesday, calling it a precaution.
And part of London's Heathrow Airport Terminal 4 was closed while officials checked a suspicious package Tuesday, police said. The terminal later reopened.
The other suspects identified by police:
Bilal Talal Abdul Samad Abdulla, 27, from Iraq. According to the British General Medical Council's register, a man named Bilal Talal Abdul Samad Abdulla was registered in 2004 and trained in Baghdad. Staff at Royal Alexandra Hospital near Glasgow said Abdulla was a diabetes specialist there.
Mohammed Jamil Abdelqader Asha, 26. A Jordanian official said Asha was of Palestinian descent and carried a Jordanian passport.
"I didn't even have the impression that he was religious," said Azmi Mahafzah, Asha's instructor at the University of Jordan medical school. "He is not a fanatic type of person."
Marwa Asha, his wife, identified in news reports as a medical assistant. Her family denied she was a militant.
"Marwa is a very educated person and she read many British novels to know England better, a country she liked so much," her father, Yunis Da'na, told The Associated Press in Jordan.
Following are details of the eight suspects arrested so far in connection with a suspected al-Qaida plot to detonate car bombs in London and Scotland.
Six are being questioned by police in London, one is in hospital in Scotland and one is being held in Australia.
Information on the eight suspects detained in failed car bomb attacks in London and Glasgow, Scotland:
—BILAL TALAL ABDUL SAMAD ABDULLA, 27: Passenger in the Jeep that crashed into Glasgow Airport terminal Saturday. Trained as a physician in Baghdad, Iraq, and registered with the British General Medical Council in 2004. Worked at Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley, Scotland, as a diabetes specialist.
—KHALID AHMED: Staff at Glasgow’s Royal Alexandra Hospital identified this doctor from Lebanon as the driver of the Jeep, but police would not confirm it. The driver remains in critical condition at Royal Alexandra Hospital for burns suffered in the attack.
—MOHAMMED JAMIL ABDELQADER ASHA, 26: Jordanian citizen of Palestinian descent arrested Saturday with his wife. Worked as a doctor at North Staffordshire Hospital in central England. His family says he is not a Muslim extremist.
—MARWA ASHA, 27: Asha’s wife, a Jordanian. Identified by British media as a medical assistant. Her father describes her as an educated woman who would never be involved in extremist activity.
—SABEEL AHMED, 26: Arrested in Liverpool on Saturday. Halton Hospital in Runcorn, northern England, said he worked as doctor there and at nearby Warrington Hospital, but gave no name or further details. Neighbors in Liverpool said the suspect was from Bangalore, India.
—UNIDENTIFIED MEN, 25 and 28: Reportedly of Middle Eastern origin, arrested in residences at Royal Alexandra Hospital on Sunday. Staff identified them as a junior doctor and a medical student. British media described both as Saudi Arabian; police refused to comment.
—MOHAMMED HANEEF, 27: Indian national arrested Sunday at Brisbane airport in Australia while trying to board a flight out of the country with a one-way ticket. Physician employed by Gold Coast Hospital in Australia’s Queensland state. Previously worked at Halton Hospital in England.
[I'm rather shocked to find some involved in terrorist plots are getting only 2 or 9 years in prison; which, I gather, is the amount of time terrorists need to plan how to execute an effective act of terrorism.]
U.K. terror suspects contacted doctors in U.S.
Lawyers charge Iraqi arrested with ‘conspiracy to cause explosions’
LONDON - Two suspects in the failed car bombings in Britain made inquiries about working in the United States, the FBI said Friday, and police said an Iraqi doctor arrested at Glasgow airport became the first person charged in the attacks.
An FBI spokeswoman said Mohammed Asha and another suspect had contacted the Philadelphia-based Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates, as first reported in The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Asha, a Jordanian physician of Palestinian heritage, contacted the agency within the last year, but apparently did not take the test for foreign medical school graduates, said the spokeswoman, Nancy O’Dowd.
“He was applying, (but) we don’t believe he took the test,” she said. She could not confirm the name of the second suspect to make inquiries.
Later, Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service said police should charge 27-year-old Bilal Abdullah, an Iraqi-born physician arrested at Glasgow’s airport after a Jeep Cherokee he was allegedly traveling in rammed into a terminal building.
“I have now made the decision that there is sufficient evidence and authorized the charging of Bilal Abdullah with conspiracy to cause explosions following incidents in London and Glasgow,” said Susan Hemming, an anti-terrorism prosecutor.
Intensely militant Muslim?
On June 29, authorities defused two car bombs that had been set to explode near packed nightclubs and pubs in central London. The following day, two people rammed a Jeep Cherokee loaded with gasoline canisters into the main terminal at Glasgow’s airport. The car, loaded with crude bombs, crashed and caught fire, seriously burning one of the suspects.
“It was as if they were waiting there to get blown up,” said police Sgt. Torquil Campbell, who apprehended Abdullah and the Jeep’s alleged driver, Khalid Ahmed, in the packed airport terminal hall.
The Iraqi-born doctor was known by others as intensely militant Muslim at the University of Cambridge. His status at the university is unclear but records show he graduated in Baghdad in 2004.
All eight suspects were foreigners working for Britain’s National Health Service, six from countries in the Middle East and two from India, and investigators are pressing to find what brought them together.
From what I know, we are getting to the bottom of this cell that has been responsible for what is happening,” Prime Minister Gordon Brown told the British Broadcasting Corp.
'Very, very difficult'
Asha was arrested on the M6 highway Saturday night along with his wife. In Jordan, security officials said Asha had no criminal record, and friends and family said they found it hard to believe either he or his wife were connected with terrorism.
Brown said Britons could expect intensified security checks in the weeks ahead.
“Crowded places and airports, I think people will have to accept that the security will be more intense,” Brown said. “We have got to avoid the possibility — and it is very, very difficult — that people can use these crowded places for explosions.”
A host of major public events are under way now or about to begin, including the Wimbledon tennis tournament, the Tour de France in London, and a Live Earth concert.
The country also is planning several ceremonies on Saturday to mark the second anniversary of London suicide bombings that killed 52 people and wounded more than 700 on July 7, 2005.
Connection in Iraq probed
Britain’s intelligence agencies are focusing on the suspects’ international links, one British intelligence official and another government official said speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the press.
“We’ve known for quite some time of al-Qaida’s growth in Iraq,” the government official told The Associated Press. “Iraq is an obvious place to look for connections, but it’s not the only country link we’re investigating.”
MI5, Britain’s domestic intelligence agency, said on its Web site that some Britons had joined the Iraqi insurgency.
“In the longer term, it is possible that they may later return to the UK and consider mounting attacks here,” the Web site said.
Investigators search for links
Al-Qaida in Iraq is believed to have become better organized since Abu Ayyub al-Masri, an Egyptian, took it over from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian who was killed by coalition forces a year ago. Iraqi officials also have said the terrorist group is now delegating more authority to sympathetic cells in other countries.
Police also are reportedly trying to determine if Abdullah and Ahmed had taken part in the attempted bombings in London and whether they were the ringleaders of a cell containing all the suspects.
Ahmed, identified by staff at Glasgow’s Royal Alexandra Hospital as a Lebanese physician employed there, is now being treated for horrific burns suffered when he set himself on fire after crashing the Jeep.
Computers seized in Australia
In Australia, police seized computers from two hospitals Friday as they explored connections between the British plotters and Muhammad Haneef, an Indian doctor arrested there.
“There are a number of people now being interviewed as part of this investigation; it doesn’t mean that they’re all suspects but it is quite a complex investigation and the links to the U.K. are becoming more concrete,” said Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty.
Muslim groups in Britain placed advertisements in British national newspapers in praise of the emergency services and to declare that terrorism is “not in our name,” borrowing the slogan from the mass protests in Britain against the invasion of Iraq.
The ads from the Muslims United coalition also quoted the Quran: “Whoever kills an innocent soul, it is as if he killed the whole of mankind. And whoever saves one, it is as if he saved the whole of mankind.”
Man sentenced to 9 years
Separately, an immigrant to Britain who collected information about staging terrorist attacks was sentenced to nine years in prison Friday. Omar Altimimi, 37, came to England from the Netherlands in 2002 and applied for asylum, but police have been unable to establish his true identity or nationality, prosecutors said.
He was convicted earlier this week of six counts of possessing material of use to terrorists and two counts of money laundering.
“You were indeed, as the prosecution contend, a sleeper for some sort of terrorist organization,” said Judge David Maddison. “It is not known, when, if and how you might have been called upon to play your part.”
The manuals in his possession included instructions on using gas canisters to make car bombs, prosecutors said, but there was no indication that Altimimi had any connection to the failed bombing attempts in London and Glasgow.
His co-defendant Yusuf Abdullah, 30, a native of Yemen who pleaded guilty to two counts of money laundering, received a two-year sentence.
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