Bomb plotters 'were known to police and MI5'

Matthew Moore, Duncan Gardham, Auslan Cramb and Richard Edwards
The Telegraph
Jul. 04, 2007

Security experts have tonight disclosed that some of the men arrested after the London and Glasgow terror attacks were known to the police and MI5 beforehand.

Professor Anthony Glees, of the Brunel Centre for Intelligence and Security, told Channel 4 News: "My understanding is at least one of these people was on the list of 1,600 identified people.

"This list was referred to by Eliza Manningham-Buller (the former MI5 Director General) last Autumn," he said.

"Most of the others were known to MI5. That is to say their names appeared on a database somewhere, but weren't necessarily on this list of identified individuals."

Scotland Yard is looking into the possibilty that the group behind the failed bombs in London went to Glasgow afterwards and target the airport, according to Sky News.

Two foreign doctors - now named as Khalid Ahmed and Bilal Abdulla - were arrested in the aftermath of the airport attack. Ahmed is critically ill in hospital after suffering 90 per cent burns.

The revelation comes after a dramatic 24 hours in the investigation into the al-Qa'eda plots. It is now known that:

The three people arrested in Scotland over the recent attacks have been transferred to London to pave the way for a "single prosecution" over the failed attacks in Glasgow and the West End.
The man who is critically ill after suffering 90 per cent burns in the Glasgow attack is called Dr Khalid Ahmed. He worked as a locum at Royal Alexandra Hospital, where he is now being treated. His chances of survival are said to be slim.
Six of the seven suspects held by British police are young Middle Eastern men employed at British hospitals.
An eighth man - Dr Mohamed Haneef - has been arrested in Australia while attempting to board a flight to Asia.
Two "Asian-looking men" in Blackburn have been arrested after taking delivery of several large gas canisters. Police say it was too early to know whether there was any connection between the arrests and the current terror alert.
The departure lounge at Heathrow Terminal Four was evacuated for two hours this afternoon after the discovery of a suspect package. Passengers are now being allowed back in but a BAA spokesman said there would be delays to some flights.
Controlled explosions have been carried out on a car parked outside a Glasgow mosque and on a suspect package at Hammersmith station in west London.

The three men - all doctors - who have been handed from the Scottish authorities to the Metropolitan Police include Bilal Abdulla, an Iraqi doctor who was a passenger in the Jeep driven into Glasgow Airport. Two men aged 25 and 28 who worked with him at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley have also been moved to London.

They will all be questioned at Paddington Green police station, where three of the other suspects are already being held.

The Crown Office, which is responsible for prosecutions in Scotland, said in a statement that the decision had been taken "to facilitate the wider investigation into the events in London and Glasgow and to allow, in due course, a single prosecution of these connected events."

The other doctors being held by police are Mohammed Asha, a "brilliant" neurosurgeon from Jordan, and a junior doctor arrested in Liverpool.

The other person being held is Dr Asha's wife.

Disclosures of the suspected terrorists' backgrounds - which came as the hunt for any others who may have been connected to the terrorist incidents continued - surprised detectives and the intelligence services.

The Muslim Council of Great Britain today said is was the "Islamic duty" of Muslims to help the security forces fight terrorism.

Declining invitations to say that British foreign policy was partly to blame for the attacks, a spokesman said: "While the building is on fire you do not seek to hand out blame, you extinguish the fire."

As Britain remained on its highest state of alert, information emerged on how the suspects were tracked down through their mobile phones and the number plates on their cars.

Clues were gathered from mobiles which were meant to act as detonators in the London car bombs. The bombers called twice to the mobile in a Mercedes parked outside Tiger Tiger nightclub in Haymarket and another in a car parked 200 yards away four times. The devices failed because of technical problems and detectives tracked the calls to identify suspects.

Dr Asha and his wife were stopped by police on the M6 in Cheshire on Saturday in an operation involving up to 15 unmarked police cars. An alert had been put out on his vehicle and it was clocked by Automatic Numberplate Recognition cameras as it headed north.

The focus of an ever widening investigation yesterday centred on the Paisley hospital.

The men arrested yesterday, aged 25 and 28, lived in the block attached to the occupational health unit. Police said they were "not of Scottish origin" but refused to elaborate. The arrests were followed by a series of controlled explosions on a blue Vauxhall car in the hospital car park. Police were searching the building and grounds.

A white BMW was blown up the day before and both vehicles are thought to belong to men who worked at the hospital. Two others are believed to have been living in staff accommodation, while two others, who are suspected of launching the attacks in London and Glasgow, were renting a semi-detached house in the village of Houston.

Sources confirmed that Abdulla qualified in Baghdad in 2004 and registered with the General Medical Council in August last year.

Sources said the man arrested in a vehicle near Lime Street Station in Liverpool, who had lived in the city, was also a junior doctor.

One of the Liverpool man's colleagues told a Muslim website yesterday that the suspect, who is 26, was a post-graduate trainee from Bangalore in India.

He said he believed it was a case of mistaken identity involving another associate from a hospital in the city, who went abroad a year ago.

He said the suspect, who began work at the hospital just under a year ago, may have been detained because he had mobile chip of the former associate and was using his internet account.

He was said to have been travelling home from Penny Lane Mosque late on Saturday night when he was arrested.

Medical sources said the men were probably recruited by the NHS or applied directly to the hospitals.

From 2006 foreign applicants had to have a visa allowing them to work in Britain - normally associated with working at a given hospital.