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Investigators Explore Link to Madrid Attacks
Rescue workers sift through wreckage in the subway between Liverpool Street and Aldgate stations in London, where a bomb killed seven people.
(By Takayuki Kawashima -- Associated Press)
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Most other Islamic extremists in Britain are attached to Pakistani and South Asian networks, while Arab radicals from the Gulf states represent a lesser threat, said Magnus Ranstorp, director of the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. While such networks sometimes overlap, he said, cell members usually belong to the same nationality or grew up in the same immigrant communities.
"I'm sure investigators are working both dimensions," Ranstorp said. "Is the center of gravity or focus on Pakistan and Bangladesh, or is the focus on the North Africans?"
A U.S. law enforcement official said yesterday that information gleaned from a suspected al Qaeda leader who goes by the nom de guerre of Abu Faraj Libbi indicates that the group was interested in carrying out an attack similar to Madrid. Libbi, whose name means he comes from Libya, was captured in May in Pakistan. He is now in U.S. custody in an undisclosed location.
The U.S. official also cautioned that Libbi provided no firm details about such a plot, which suggests that it was only wishful thinking. Libbi also has told interrogators that while radical Islamic groups would ideally like to strike the United States, Europe currently provides an easier target because of less stringent security and border measures, the official said. "They're still interested in us, but we're a harder target right now," the official said.
Two U.S. intelligence officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the connection between the Madrid network and the London bombers was one of several working theories being pursued by investigators. They said they were giving equal weight to the possibility that other groups were behind the attacks.
U.S. and European counterterrorism officials have also named Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian who is the leader of a network of foreign fighters in Iraq, as a possible inspiration for the London bombings. Zarqawi has struck an alliance with al Qaeda but has developed a separate network of supporters in several European countries.
Staff writers Dan Eggen in Washington and Dafna Linzer in New York, staff researcher Julie Tate in Washington and special correspondent Jennifer Green in Madrid contributed to this report.
