London bomb suspect confesses

2005-07-30 11:25

Rome - The man believed to be the fourth would-be bomber in the failed July 21 attacks said he and his accomplices wanted their attack to spread fear in London, in an apparent confession reported by Italian newspapers on Saturday.

"We wanted to make an attack, but only as a demonstration," several newspapers quoted 27-year-old Osman Hussain as saying, without citing a source.

Italy's best-selling newspaper, the Corriere della Sera, expressed fears that the presence of one of the presumed London bombers could be linked to an planned attack here.

"Was he here just as part of his escape or to prepare a new attack?" it asked.

Rome daily Il Messaggero headlined: "The suicide bomber was among us," and reported that police believe Hussain could have been in Rome to prepare a terrorist attack.

Italian police moved in to arrest Hussain on Friday after tracking his mobile phone through France and Italy before his arrival in Rome by train on Thursday.

British police had provided their Italian counterparts with the phone number, which was initially tracked to the Waterloo Station area of London on Monday but then went silent. The signal was picked up again in Paris on Wednesday, and then again in Milan and Bologna on Thursday.

Police in Rome meanwhile mounted round-the-clock surveillance on Hussain's brother, a Somali national who owns a phone and internet centre near Rome's Termini Station. He eventually led them to the flat in the eastern Rome suburb where Hussain was arrested on Friday after paying a visit to a small mosque.

Among a number of people detained for questioning late on Friday was a Tunisian official at the mosque, Mohamed ben Mohamed.

"I came to Rome because I didn't know where else to go and because I had friends here and could find a place to stay. I would have stayed here for a while and then gone elsewhere. I don't know of any plan to attack Italy," La Repubblica quoted the suspect as telling police.

Citing a police source, Turin daily La Stampa said Hussain protested he knew little of the organisational background to the July 21 attacks on the London transport system and that he had been handed a rucksack to take on the Underground.

Several newspapers reported that Hussain's fluent Italian surprised interrogators. They said he had previously spent five years in Rome, having fled to Italy on a false passport, either from Somalia or a neighbouring country, as a teenager. In the meantime, he has become a British citizen.

- AFP