British police say 2 suspects in terror plot are Iraqi, Palestinian doctors
Mon Jul 2, 11:02 PM
By David Stringer
LONDON (AP) - At least two doctors working at British hospitals were identified Monday among suspects arrested in Britain's failed car bomb attacks and authorities announced three new arrests - including one in Australia - as the investigation spread overseas.
British news reports said an Indian doctor also was among the eight people now in custody and another outlet said at least five of the detainees were doctors. Police would confirm only that a Palestinian doctor and Iraqi physician were among those being held.
Officers used heightened stop-and-search powers and armed response vehicles to hunt for anyone else who might have been involved in the plot and police put on a show of force to bolster security at airports and train stations and on city streets.
Hours after police announced the arrests of two more people in the Glasgow area, officials said an eighth suspect was detained "abroad by local authorities" Monday.
Australian authorities later said he was arrested at the airport in the eastern city Brisbane while trying to leave the country. Queensland state Premier Peter Beattie described the suspect as a 27-year-old man but withheld his identity.
Beattie said he was a "model citizen" with "excellent references."
Australian police are questioning a second doctor about the failed terrorist attacks, Beattie said. But authorities were not aware of any specific link between the second doctor and the foiled attacks.
Australian Attorney General Philip Ruddock said the suspect arrested at the airport was a doctor at a hospital in Queensland state and was not a citizen. Authorities said he was recruited in Liverpool, England but completed his medical internship in India.
A British security official said earlier in the day Pakistan and several other countries were asked to check possible links with the suspects. British-born terrorists behind the bloody 2005 London transit bombings and others in thwarted plots were linked to terror training camps and foreign radicals in Pakistan.
"We have asked partners overseas to check possible links and that work has begun," the security official said, adding it is still possible some British-born people were involved in the plot.
Authorities said police searched at least 19 locations as part of the "fast-moving investigation," which has come at a time of already high vigilance before the anniversary of the suicide bombings in London that killed 52 people July 7, 2005.
Two U.S. counterterrorism officials, who agreed to discuss the case only if not quoted by name, said the attackers in Britain were Islamic extremists sympathetic to al-Qaida but investigators were still trying to figure out whether there were any direct links.
In the latest attacks, two car bombs failed to explode in central London on Friday and two men rammed a Jeep Cherokee loaded with gas cylinders into the entrance of Glasgow International Airport and then set it on fire Saturday.
The British government security official said investigators were working on one theory that the same people may have driven the explosives-laden cars into London and the blazing SUV in Glasgow.
The unidentified driver of the Jeep was being treated for serious burns at Royal Alexandra Hospital in Glasgow, where he was under arrest by armed police. Bomb experts carried out a second controlled explosion on a car at the hospital Monday, after a similar blast Sunday. Police said the car was linked to the investigation but no explosives had been found.
Police announced Monday they arrested two men the previous day at residences at the hospital but would not say whether they were doctors. Britain's Sky Television described them as trainee physicians, without citing a source for its report.
Four men and a woman were detained earlier.
Authorities identified Bilal Abdulla, an Iraqi doctor who worked at the Glasgow hospital, as the other man arrested at the airport and said he was being held at a high-security police station in Glasgow.
The British General Medical Council's register showed a man named Bilal Talal Abdul Samad Abdulla was registered in 2004 and trained in Baghdad. Staff at the Glasgow hospital said Abdulla was a diabetes specialist.
A man arrested late Saturday on a highway in central England was also a physician, Mohammed Jamil Abdelqader Asha, police said. A Jordanian official said Asha was of Palestinian descent and carried a Jordanian passport.
Britain's Independent and Muslim News newspapers reported a man arrested in Liverpool late Saturday was a 26-year-old doctor from Bangalore, India, who worked at Halton Hospital in Cheshire, northern England. Police would not immediately comment on the reports.
The Muslim News also said the Indian doctor had used the car, cellphone and Internet account of a fellow physician who had moved from England to Australia about a year ago. It said police had asked friends of the Indian for details about the man who went to Australia.
"This case could be the final proof that an idea those involved in these type of attacks are all young, angry and poorly educated is a mistake," said Paul Cornish, a former British army officer and director of defence studies at London's Chatham House think-tank.
"It's wrong to suggest al-Qaida are ignorant hill men. They are often middle or upper class and well-educated," Cornish said.
Former U.S intelligence officer Bob Ayers, now a security analyst based in London, said wealth or intelligence matters little to people committed to extremism.
"We shouldn't be surprised that educated men are as involved as poor youngsters," he said.
"They all subscribe to the same radical ideology, that's the only criteria they need to fill."
Salil Vengalil, a doctor at North Staffordshire Hospital, near the Midlands town Newcastle-under-Lyme, said Asha worked in the neurology department at that hospital.
A doctor at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Glasgow, who refused to give his name, said he recognized Asha as a doctor who also kept an office there. The hospital would not confirm that.
In Amman, Jordan, Asha's father, Jamil, denied his 26-year-old son had any terrorist leanings.
"My son is a moderate Muslim and carried out his religious duties but he never embraced fanaticism," he said.
Information also surfaced Monday suggesting authorities had been close on the trail of the alleged plotters before the attack at the Glasgow airport.
Rental agent Daniel Gardiner, whose company leased a Glasgow-area house searched by police, said officers contacted his firm just before the airport blaze to say they had tracked phone records linked to the property.
Officials recovered at least one cellphone from the car bombs in London, U.S. Representative Peter King of New York, the senior Republican on the U.S. House of Representatives' homeland security committee, said Friday after being briefed about the London situation.
As the investigation spread, police flooded London's subway and train stations, even clamping down on access to the Wimbledon tennis tournament, where concrete blocks were set in front of the main entrance.
In a statement to the House of Commons, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith urged Britons to remain united.
"Let us be clear: terrorists are criminals, whose victims come from all walks of life, communities and religious backgrounds," she said.
"Terrorists attack the values that are shared by all law-abiding citizens. It is through our unity that the terrorists will eventually be defeated." _________________ kyranŠ
http://bux.to/?r=jades
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum
