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| Britain |
| NYT sez there's little evidence of foreign support in London booms |
| 2005-07-31 |
| I find it very interesting that NYT is quoting UK investigators to this effect when even al-Guardian is saying it's al-Qaeda. As police officers investigating the two London bombing attacks questioned suspects rounded up in London and Rome, they have begun to explore the possibility that both assaults were largely homegrown efforts with minimal outside support, senior British investigators said Saturday. They also said they had not established any solid evidence linking the attack on July 7, which killed 52 along with the four bombers, and the failed bombings on July 21. The British officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the continuing criminal investigation, stressed that their investigation was still in its early stages and that their analyses might change. "The point is simply that so far, there is not a foreign connection that is the major focus of our inquiry," a senior police official said. Three arrests on Friday, two in London and one in Rome, meant that all four suspects in the attempted attacks on July 21 are now in custody, along with a fifth man who also may have been involved. Scotland Yard is trying to determine whether either team was helped by a support network. In particular, the investigation is focusing on whether a Britain-based mastermind or bombmaker helped with the July 7 and July 21 plots. The capture of the five suspects brought only the most cautious sense of relief to Britons, and the police warned that the country still faced what Peter Clarke, London's top counterterrorism official, called a "very real" threat. Scotland Yard said Saturday that two more men had been arrested under counterterrorism laws in two raids in the city of Leicester about 4 a.m. But a police statement said, "There is no reason to currently suspect that these arrests are in any way connected to recent terrorist activity in London." The suspect arrested in Rome told investigators that he carried a bomb through London's subway, but claimed it was meant as a "demonstration" rather than as a means of killing, a person with firsthand knowledge of the interrogation said on Saturday. The person who talked about the interrogation, who declined to speak for attribution because the law bars such disclosures, said the suspect maintained that his group was not connected to the bombers in the July 7 attacks or to al Qaeda. The 27-year-old Ethiopian, who fled Britain four days ago, was identified in Rome as Osman Hussain and in Britain as Hussain Osman. He told interrogators that he had come to Italy not to carry out attacks but to visit his brother. Meanwhile, the investigators are looking closely at the July 21 bombs, which failed to detonate. Forensic evidence shows that the bombs used in both attacks were crude homemade devices. So far, the police have little evidence pointing to a foreigner entering the country and helping either group build the bombs. "Everything that we have suggests that these could have been made with knowledge in this country," a police official said. "These are the type of devices you can make yourself with information you could acquire from the Internet, or other extremist training manuals." "It is very unsophisticated, and that is one of the scary bits," said Paul Beaver, a defense analyst in London. British officials also minimized the importance of two men they initially believed might have played roles in the July 7 attacks. One is a suspected terrorist arrested in Zambia last week, Haroon Rashid Aswat, a British national of Indian descent; the other is an Egyptian-born chemist, Magdy Mahmoud Mustafa el-Nashar. Aswat fell under suspicion early in the investigation because he had trained at al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and had been a senior aide to Abu Hamza al-Masri, the blind cleric who preached vitriolic anti-Western sermons at the Finsbury Mosque in northern London. Investigators also found that calls had been made from his cell phone to West Yorkshire, where three of the July 7 bombers lived. But investigators said they now had determined that no calls were to the bombers. "For now, this man or any role he may have does not figure, to any degree of importance, in our inquiry," said a British security official. "Of course, this could change." Several weeks before the July 7 bombings, the South African government alerted the United States that Aswat was in their country. Aswat is wanted in the United States on allegations that he had tried to set up an al Qaeda camp in Oregon in late 1999. The Americans asked South Africa to arrest Aswat and turn him over to the United States without going through formal extradition proceedings. The South Africans contacted the British government, because Aswat is a British citizen. The British balked at the U.S. request for his arrest and deportation to the United States. "The U.K. would not stand in the way of any legitimate request to arrest anyone suspected of involvement in terrorism or any crime, but we would expect that arrest to be conducted through a proper legal process," said the security official. "That is by way of a proper extradition warrant." The chemist, el-Nashar, was originally suspected as a possible bombmaker. But a Scotland Yard official said he was "no longer an active part" of the police investigation. The police might still want to talk to him as a witness, the official added. El-Nashar, a graduate student in chemistry at Leeds University, had come under suspicion because he had lent the keys to his apartment to one of the July 7 bombers, and he left for Egypt 10 days before the blast. He was arrested in Cairo, but he insisted that he had gone to Egypt on vacation. He is still believed to be in custody in Cairo. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #3 "The British officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the continuing criminal investigation..." So what we have here is an article alledgedly based on comments from people who know that their commenting is unethical and thus are untrustworthy people. That's the NYT for you. |
| Posted by: Neutron Tom 2005-07-31 20:55 |
| #2 There is little evidence of intelligent life at the Times, too. |
| Posted by: SR-71 2005-07-31 19:36 |
| #1 "The U.K. would not stand in the way of any legitimate request to arrest anyone suspected of involvement in terrorism or any crime, but we would expect that arrest to be conducted through a proper legal process," said the security official. "That is by way of a proper extradition warrant." It's this kind of BS that will lose us this struggle. The UK should have told SA we don't want him, go ahead. Now is 6 or 7 years after it's been fully debated in the House of Commons and been through the EU Human Rights Court he might be extradited. This law enforcement mentality is going to lose us this struggle. This is a war not a criminal enterprise we are fighting. |
| Posted by: Sock Puppet 0’ Doom 2005-07-31 17:14 |