 LONDON -- Police dispatched more officers to guard the capital's Underground train system yesterday as investigators focused on a key question: Were the two sets of London bombers part of the same network, or did they operate independently? Meanwhile, Italian police said a man arrested for his role in the July 21 attempted subway bombings has a brother living in Canada. The groups struck exactly two weeks apart and both hit three subway cars and a red double-decker bus. The July 7 attacks killed 52 victims and all four suicide bombers, while the July 21 attackers' explosives failed to detonate and took no lives. It's likely the two cells - the first made up mostly of Pakistani Britons and the second of immigrants from East Africa - didn't know of one another but reported to the same organizer, said Alex Standish, editor of Jane's Intelligence Digest. | Or they each had a seperate handler who reported to a single "mastermind". Classic cell structure. |
"That has to be the assumption (investigators) are working on at the moment," he said. "Only by uncovering the structure can they hope to discover whether there are further cells operating in the U.K." | I'd guess yes, but you'll have to locate the mastermind and work back down from him. People in each cell should not know members of another, unless someone slipped up. |
In Italy, where one of the suspected July 21 attackers is being interrogated, Carlo De Stefano, head of the country's anti-terror police, said the investigation so far indicated that the suspect, Hamdi Issac, was "part of a loosely knit group rather than a well-structured group." Issac was charged in Italy with association with the aim of international terrorism and possessing false documents, said Antonietta Sonnessa, his lawyer. Abdulahai Issac, one of Hamdi Issac's four brothers, left Italy for Canada in 1996, Italian anti-terrorism police said. The Canadian government granted him the status of political refugee and gave him economic aid, but officials did not clarify whether he had assumed a false identity to obtain such a status, as his brother Hamdi had upon his arrival in London. | I'd be surprised if the Canadians even know who or where he is. |
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