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British police face doubts over eventual bombing role of
Egyptian
(AFP) 16 July 2005 LONDON - British police investigating the London bombings confronted doubts in Egypt on Saturday about whether an Egyptian biochemist, arrested in Cairo during a visit from England, was involved in the plot.
He has
denied any involvement, said a ministry statement, adding that Nashar had lived
in Britain since 2000, studying for a doctorate at Leeds University, and that he
was planning to return. Interior
Minister Habib Al Adly said Nashar has no links with the Al Qaeda network,
which British police suspect was behind the July 7 bombings that claimed the
lives of 54 people on three London subway trains and a
bus. In a
statement published Saturday in the government daily Al Gumhuriya, the minister
said media reports about Nashar are unfounded and are only hasty
deductions. ABC News
in the United States claimed that the Cairo arrest might have produced the man
who made the bombs that went off July 7. The
Egyptian interior ministry said Nashar had gone to Britain to study at Leeds
University and had resided in Britain since 2000 until now to obtain his
doctorate, which he did earlier this year. Previous
reports in Britain said police were seeking a suspect with a similar name who
had been studying chemistry at Leeds University, in the northern city where
three of the suspected bombers lived. Londons
Metropolitan Police said it was aware of an arrest in Cairo, but declined to
give further details into what a spokeswoman called a fast-moving
investigation that has taken on a multi-national
character. Metropolitan
Police commissioner Sir Ian Blair confirmed on BBC radio that there was a
Pakistan connection to the bombings, in which three of the four suspected
perpetrators were Britons of Pakistani origin. But he
added: There are also connections in other countries. In
Islamabad, security officials said Britain had given Pakistan a list of suspects
with possible links to the London attacks, while two Islamic religious schools
denied having hosted one of the youthful suspected bombers, Shehzad Tanweer,
22. The
Times newspaper quoted unidentified sources as saying that Nashar was of
interest to the investigation and that the anti-terrorist branch plans to send
detectives to Egypt to speak to him. In
Leeds, investigators broadened their search Friday to an Islamic bookshop, the
Iqra learning centre, around the corner from Tanweers
home. Commissioner
Blair said: What we expect to find at some stage is that there is a clear Al
Qaeda link, a clear Al Qaeda approach. The
four men who are dead and who we believe to be the bombers though we have only
confirmed two identities absolutely are in the category of foot soldiers, he
said. What
weve got to find is, who encouraged them? Who trained them? Whos the chemist?
Those are the things in which we are now so interested. BBC
televisions Newsnight programme said evidence of acetone peroxide, used to
make the powerful explosive TATP, had been found at a home in Leeds linked to
one of the bombers. It was
the same type of explosive that Al Qaeda shoe bomber Richard Reid tried to
detonate on a Miami-bound flight in December 2001, three months after the
September 11 attacks in New York and Washington that killed some
3,000. The
development suggests that the explosives used in London were homemade, and not
of military origin as had initially been thought. Blair
described the BBC report as reasonably fair. Meanwhile,
about 20 senior Muslim theological leaders in Britain Friday condemned the
bombings in London and said those who carried them out could not be considered
martyrs. We
regard these acts as utterly criminal, totally reprehensible, and absolutely
un-Islamic, they said in a statement read by the imam of the central mosque of
the English Midlands city of Leicester, Mohammad Shahid Reza, on their
behalf. In
addition to Tanweer, Hasib Hussain, 18, is the only other suspect named by the
police. Press
reports have widely named a third like the other two a Briton of Pakistani
heritage living in or near Leeds as Mohammed Sadique Khan,
30. The
fourth is said to have been a 19-year-old Jamaican immigrant to Britain, living
in Aylesbury, northwest of London, who changed his name from Lindsay Germaine to
Lindsay Jamal when he converted to Islam. The
Times said Jamal was said by US intelligence sources to have been on a terror
watch list and was monitored when he visited relatives in the United States, but
he had dropped off the radar. The Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in anarchy" Groupe de communication Mulindwas "avec Yoweri Museveni, l'Ouganda est dans l'anarchie" |
Officials at the Egyptian interior ministry said Magdy Mahmud Mustafa
Nashar, 33, detained in Cairo on Thursday, was being investigated to find out
whether he was involved in the bombings that recently took place in
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