FBI joins London attacks probe

2005-07-15 10:45

Beth Gardiner

London - British and FBI officials investigating an al-Qaeda connection in the London terror attacks focused on an Egyptian-born chemist who studied in the United States and an 18-year-old Briton of Pakistani descent believed to have set off the bomb aboard a red double-decker bus.

British authorities were seeking a Pakistani Briton with possible ties to al-Qaeda followers in the United States, news reports said. They said he may have organised the attacks and chosen the targets, leaving Britain the day before the July 7 bombings.

"Al-Qaeda is not an organisation. Al-Qaeda is a way of working ... but this has the hallmarks of that approach," Blair said of the attacks, which killed 54 people, including four bombers. "Al-Qaeda clearly has the ability to provide training ... to provide expertise ... and I think that is what has occurred here."

Names on a computer that authorities seized last year from Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, an alleged Pakistani computer expert for al-Qaeda, matched a suspected cell of young Britons of Pakistani origin, most of whom lived near Luton, where the alleged suicide bombers met up on their way to London shortly before last week's blasts, according to the report.

New links discovered

Authorities have now discovered ties between Mohammed Sidique Khan - one of the July 7 bombers - and members of that cell who were arrested last year, ABC said.

FBI agents in Raleigh, North Carolina, joined the search for the chemist, Magdy Asi el-Nashar, a 33-year-old former North Carolina State University graduate student.

And in a further international development in the inquiry, Jamaica's government said it was investigating a Jamaican-born Briton as one of the bombers.

Blair said finding those who planned the attack "is the absolute focus of the current investigation." An outside mastermind may have recruited the four bombers, provided explosives, helped build the bombs or given other logistical support.

The Times said detectives also want to locate el-Nashar, who was thought to have rented one of the homes police searched in Leeds in a series of raids Tuesday. Neighbours reported el-Nashar recently left Britain, saying he had a visa problem, the newspaper said.

British police were also questioning a 29-year-old man they arrested in the Leeds raids. Britain's Press Association news agency has identified him as a relative of a suspected bomber.

Two of the attackers had brushes with the police before the bombings, and one had been linked loosely to another terror plot, news reports said.

Tanweer was reportedly arrested once for shoplifting, and Hussain had been questioned for disorderly behaviour.

The Independent newspaper, citing police sources, said one suspect - it did not say which - had been linked loosely to a plot to build a large bomb near London.

- AP