Note: Please upgrade your Flash plug-in to view our enhanced content.
Page 2 of 2   <      

Imam Says 2 UK Suspects Changed Recently

The brothers are among eight people held in the case. Theirs was a cosmopolitan family. Both parents were doctors who settled in a simple, two-story home named "Kauser," after the heavenly lake mentioned in the Quran.

In recent years, the brothers stopped coming to the neighborhood mosque when they were back on visits. Hassaan said he asked their father to bring them, but says he was told "their religious point of view is now very different from ours."


This undated photo made available on Sunday, July 8, 2007 by the office of the Common Enrtrance Test, (CET) in Bangalore, India, shows Indian engineer Kafeel Ahmed. Bilal Abdullah, a 27-year-old doctor born in Britain and raised in Iraq, is accused with Kafeel Ahmed, alleged to be the driver of a Jeep Cherokee laden with gas cylinders and gasoline into the main terminal of Scotland's busiest airport on June 30. (AP Photo/HO/CET)
This undated photo made available on Sunday, July 8, 2007 by the office of the Common Enrtrance Test, (CET) in Bangalore, India, shows Indian engineer Kafeel Ahmed. Bilal Abdullah, a 27-year-old doctor born in Britain and raised in Iraq, is accused with Kafeel Ahmed, alleged to be the driver of a Jeep Cherokee laden with gas cylinders and gasoline into the main terminal of Scotland's busiest airport on June 30. (AP Photo/HO/CET) (AP)

"I do not know what was going on in the hearts and minds of those two men," Hassaan said. "This news is a big shock for all of us. ... We could never have imagined this."

On Monday, Indian investigators said they had seized a computer hard drive and CDs belonging to Kafeel Ahmed. Kafeel left them when he went back to Britain in early May, said Bangalore's police commissioner, N. Achuta Rao.

"The hard disk is being examined to ascertain the contents and possible connection to the UK incident and also regarding terrorist activity, if any, in India and elsewhere," Rao said.

Rao said Indian police had questioned the friends and family of the Ahmeds as well as those who knew Mohammad Haneef, a 27-year-old doctor stopped at the Brisbane, Australia, airport and arrested July 2 based on information from British officials.

Police in Australia on Monday were granted two more days to question Haneef under counterterrorism laws that allow detention without filing charges. He is also from Bangalore and was working at a hospital in eastern Queensland state after emigrating from Britain last year.

The case emerged June 29, when two cars packed with gas cylinders and nails were discovered in London's entertainment district. The next day, the flaming Jeep smashed into security barriers at the main terminal at Glasgow airport.

Only one of the eight people in custody as suspects has been charged: Bilal Abdullah, an Iraqi doctor identified as a passenger in the Jeep that Kafeel Ahmed is accused of driving.

An Indian newspaper, The Hindustan Times, said investigators in Bangalore were looking for anything that might link the two men to terror acts in India. It said there was evidence suggesting Abdullah had visited Bangalore to meet with the two Ahmed brothers.

News of the Ahmeds' arrest jolted the family's quiet neighborhood, where photographers and television crews have parked in front of their home around the clock. The brothers' parents and sister haven't been seen outside their homes for several days.

"The media has hounded and harassed this family," said B.T. Venkatesh, a human rights lawyer helping the Ahmed family.

"They are simple and religious people and they have no idea what is going on," he said, adding the family had not even been asked by British authorities to officially identify the driver of the Jeep as their son Kafeel.

On Monday, a woman who identified herself as Sadia Kauser, the sister of Kafeel and Sabeel, said no one in the family would talk to the media. "You have no idea how our family is suffering right now," she said.

Elsewhere, the France-based Interpol complained Monday that Britain's government had not cooperated with the international police agency in the latest terrorism case.

"We have received not one name, not one fingerprint, not one telephone number, not one address, nothing, from the U.K., about the recent thwarted terrorist attacks," Interpol Secretary-General Ronald Noble, a former U.S. Treasury official, said in an interview with British Broadcasting Corp. television.

He also said Britain was not making good use Interpol's information on suspected terrorists, stolen passports and other data.

British officials said they are striving to make fuller use of Interpol's databases.

Britain has recorded "all known and suspected terrorists declared by Interpol" on a watch list, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith told the House of Commons. She said officials were working to access Interpol's list of lost and stolen passport numbers.


<       2

© 2007 The Associated Press