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British Arrests 5th Suspect
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."Terrorism analysts said it appeared that the timing and location of the planned bombings were intended to coincide with Brown's first days of 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. 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. 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. Posted by: Pappy 2007-07-02 |
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