5 Suspects Held in British Bomb Attempts

By Mary Jordan and Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, July 2, 2007

LONDON, July 1 -- British police arrested a fifth person Sunday and raided homes in three cities in connection with attempted car bombings that officials say are connected to al-Qaeda.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who took over from Tony Blair on Wednesday, said in a nationally televised interview that "we are dealing, in general terms, with people who are associated with al-Qaeda."

On Friday, police in London found two Mercedes sedans packed with propane gas, gasoline and nails and said the drivers had intended to detonate them and kill as many people as possible. On Saturday in Glasgow, two men crashed a Jeep containing propane gas into the main terminal of the Glasgow Airport, setting it on fire. Those two men are in custody.

The driver, who witnesses said tried to immolate himself, suffered severe burns and is in critical condition in a Scottish hospital. In a separate incident outside that hospital Sunday, police carried out a "controlled explosion" on a suspicious vehicle but did not find explosives.

In addition to the two men involved in the Glasgow attack, a 26-year-old man and a 27-year-old woman were arrested in central England after police in unmarked vehicles forced their car off a major highway. A 26-year-old man was also arrested in Liverpool.

According to recent anti-terrorism legislation, police can hold the suspects -- if a judge agrees -- for as long as 28 days without charge.

Though police have not released details of those in custody, several witnesses at the airport said the men appeared to be of South Asian descent. CNN and Sky News reported late Sunday that two of the five people in custody were medical doctors. The BBC reported that none of the five were British but came from "various Middle Eastern countries" and that one prime suspect was still at large.

Several Scottish officials, trying to calm a nation unaccustomed to terrorist attacks, said the men involved in the airport incident were not Scottish.

Scotland's justice secretary, Kenny MacAskill, said the two men were not "born and bred here; any suggestion to be made that they are homegrown terrorists is not true."

John Neilson, a senior police official, told a group of Muslims at the Central Mosque in Glasgow: "The people we have in custody came to Scotland a short while ago to seek work. . . . These are not your young people."

Bashir Maan, president of the Islamic Center in Glasgow, who was at the mosque meeting, said in a telephone interview that "the Muslim community was very despondent" over the attacks but relieved that those arrested were not from Scotland.

Maan said there are about 50,000 Muslims in Scotland. "Muslims have very good relationships in Scotland," he said, adding that "nothing like this has happened" there before.

Terrorism analysts said it appeared that the timing and location of the planned bombings were intended to coincide with Brown's first days in office. They also noted that Brown is Scottish.

"That was probably a major factor in this," said M.J. Gohel, chief executive of the Asia-Pacific Foundation, a London policy group that specializes in security issues. "Otherwise, it makes no sense as to why they would pick that particular moment as well as Glasgow as a target."

Gohel said the perpetrators may have been trying to fuel public pressure for a rapid withdrawal of British troops from Iraq, an issue that was already looming as a major test for Brown's government.

"This was a signal to the new government, a statement of intent and intimidation," he said.

Gohel noted that al-Qaeda affiliates were emboldened by the success of the March 11, 2004, train bombings in Madrid, which preceded general elections in Spain by three days. Voters subsequently chose a new government led by Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who had promised to end Spain's military involvement in Iraq.

Peter Clarke, Scotland Yard's chief of anti-terrorism operations, said the investigation was "fast-moving. It is no exaggeration at all to say that new information is coming to light hour by hour." Police were searching homes and buildings near Glasgow and in Staffordshire and Liverpool.

Clarke said "extremely valuable" forensic information was found in the two Mercedes sedans. He said the links between the Glasgow and London attempted bombings were becoming "ever clearer."

"I'm confident -- absolutely confident -- that in the coming days and weeks we will be able to gain a thorough understanding of the methods used by the terrorists, of the way in which they planned their attacks, and of the network to which they belong." He also said thousands of hours of closed-circuit television footage was being analyzed.

Scottish police, who encouraged the many witnesses at Glasgow Airport to hand over any cellphone and camera images of the incident, said they were receiving about 100 calls an hour from the public.

"We will not yield, we will not be intimidated, and we will not allow anyone to undermine our British way of life," Brown said. The country can expect "a long-term and sustained attack on values we represent" by extremists using different weapons, "whether planes or cars," he said.

British counterterrorism authorities had warned in April of a possible al-Qaeda plot timed to the recent change in government.

In a quarterly intelligence report leaked to the Sunday Times of London and published April 22, Britain's Joint Terrorism Analysis Center revealed that a senior al-Qaeda commander had advocated carrying out an attack in Britain before Blair left office. According to the report, intelligence officials had recovered a letter written by Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, a top al-Qaeda operative who was later captured by the CIA, detailing al-Qaeda's desire to attack Britain during "a change in the head of the company," apparently referring to the handover of power from Blair to Brown.

British intelligence officials have described al-Iraqi as the brains behind a failed plot in 2004 to bomb a London nightclub, power plants and a shopping mall. Five men were sentenced to life in prison in April for their role in that case, which was dubbed "Operation Crevice" by British police.

A witness during the trial testified that the ringleader of the plot met with al-Iraqi in Pakistan. The same witness, an al-Qaeda operative who is in U.S. custody, also testified that al-Iraqi met in Pakistan with two of the culprits responsible for the July 7, 2005, train and bus bombings in London, which killed 52 commuters in addition to the four attackers.

Special correspondent Karla Adam contributed to this report.