U.K. doctor plot thickens TheStar.com - News - U.K. doctor plot thickens
All 8 detainess have ties to health service, but genesis of terror scheme still eludes investigators
July 04, 2007
Mitch Potter
EUROPE BUREAU
LONDON–Were they sent to Britain with malicious intent, or did the will to wreak havoc come later? That is now the central question for Britain's counter-terror command as it works to unravel the botched weekend car bomb attempts in London and Scotland.
With six foreign doctors, one medical student and a former lab technician in custody after a four-day manhunt, investigators are quietly satisfied the "major suspects" in the case are in hand.
The probe now is shifting focus, as Scotland Yard works to pinpoint the genesis of the plot that fell apart bloodlessly in a surreal series of events that began early Friday.
All eight detainees have ties to Britain's National Health Service, overlapping in their duties at two hospitals in England and Scotland. Most also have roots elsewhere, but investigators have thus far found scant few common threads in their respective backgrounds in Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, India and Saudi Arabia.
The suspects, apparently all in their mid- to late 20s, include:
Bilal Abdullah, 27, an Iraqi doctor who worked at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley, Scotland. He has been identified as a passenger in the Jeep Cherokee that ploughed into the main terminal of Glasgow Airport and burst into flames. He was detained at the airport at the time of the attack.
Khalid Ahmed, reported to be the driver of the SUV, who was critically burned in the fire. Originally from Lebanon he worked and roomed with Abdullah in Paisley. Suffering from severe burns to 90 per cent of his body, Ahmed is not expected to survive, a hospital source said yesterday.
Mohammad Jamil Asha, 26, a Palestinian-Jordanian neurosurgeon, who was arrested along with his wife, Marwah Dana Asha, 27, Saturday night on a highway in northern England. He worked at the North Staffordshire Hospital in Stoke-on-Trent. Asha's wife formerly worked as a lab technician at a hospital in Shrewsbury, England.
Mohammed Haneef, 27, an Indian doctor who worked at Halton Hospital in Cheshire, south of Liverpool, in 2005. He was detained in Brisbane, Australia, as he was about to board a flight with a one-way ticket.
Another man identified as Sabeel Ahmed, 26, a postgraduate medical trainee from India, reportedly worked with Haneef in Cheshire and was detained in Liverpool on Saturday night.
Two unidentified medical students who lived in a medical residence of the Royal Alexandra Hospital, are believed to be from Saudi Arabia.
As the riddle unfolds, British media sources last night added conflicting reports, suggesting that one and possibly more of the suspects were known to police and also Britain's MI5 security service.
"My understanding is that at least one of these people was on the list of 1,600 identified people," Anthony Glees of the Brunel Centre for Intelligence and Security told Channel 4 News, referring to a British government database of individuals under close scrutiny.
"Most of the others were known to MI5. That is to say their names appeared on a database somewhere, but weren't necessary on this list of identified individuals."
The Times of London, meanwhile, reported that a senior Al Qaeda figure in Iraq warned a British cleric in April that attacks were on the way, saying "those who cure you will kill you."
Canon Andrew White told The Times he met the unnamed Al Qaeda leader on the sidelines of a religious reconciliation meeting in Amman, Jordan. White said he conveyed the warning to officials at the British foreign ministry but not the specific words he was told.
With so many unlikely suspects in custody, it was revealed yesterday that the investigation was close to intercepting Saturday's attempted car-bombing mission at Glasgow Airport.
Detectives had arrived in Scotland the night before, chasing the trove of clues contained in unexploded cellphones that were meant to trigger Friday's twin car-bombings in central London.
Sources close to the investigation said two of the suspects,Abdulla and Ahmed, were alerted with a phone call that the net was closing and raced toward the airport with the intention to immolate a Jeep Cherokee inside the main terminal.
The final link in the chain of arrests fell into place in Australia with the arrest of Haneef.
Haneef, a former employee of Halton Hospital in England, was arrested in Brisbane at the behest of British investigators. It was revealed yesterday that he trained in the Indian city of Bangalore at the same university attended by another suspect arrested on the weekend in Liverpool.
A second foreign doctor working in Australia and known to be an associate of Haneef was questioned and released yesterday.
The families of several of the suspects have staunchly protested their innocence.
And yesterday the arrest of two more men under Britain's Terrorism Act – reportedly on telephone tip that they were of Middle Eastern descent and had taken receipt of propane gas canisters – prompted criticisms that the hair-trigger approach of British law enforcement today is to ask questions first and release the innocent lovers of barbecue second.
But with two of the eight suspects captured literally with fire on their hands, even the Muslim Council of Britain, the country's largest umbrella group, emerged yesterday with an unequivocal declaration that "condemnation is not enough."
The council, with 400 affiliate organizations, signalled a major policy shift, telling reporters it now is ready to set aside quarrels over British foreign policy and directly urge its communities to play a key role in the fight against extremism that operates under the cloak of religion.
"When the house is on fire the concern must be not to blame each other but to put the fire out," said Muhammad Abdul Bari, the council's secretary general.
"Those who seek to deliberately kill or maim innocent people are the enemies of us all. There is no cause whatsoever that could possibly justify such barbarity," Bari said.
