From NYT:
Two suspects in the failed car bombings in Britain made inquiries about working in the United States, the FBI said Friday, and police said an Iraqi doctor arrested at Glasgow airport became the first person charged in the attacks.
KHALIL MAZRAAWI / AFP, Getty Images
Mohammed Jamil Asha , a doctor, and his wife, Marwa (right), a medical technician, were among those arrested. With them are his mother and son.
An FBI spokeswoman said Mohammed Asha and another suspect had contacted the Philadelphia-based Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates, as first reported in The Philadelphia Inquirer. Asha, a Jordanian physician of Palestinian heritage, contacted the agency within the last year, but apparently did not take the test for foreign medical school graduates, said the spokeswoman, Nancy O’Dowd.
”He was applying, (but) we don’t believe he took the test,” she said. She could not confirm the name of the second suspect to make inquiries.
Later, Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service said police should charge 27-year-old Bilal Abdullah, an Iraqi-born physician arrested at Glasgow’s airport after a Jeep Cherokee he was allegedly traveling in rammed into a terminal building.
”I have now made the decision that there is sufficient evidence and authorized the charging of Bilal Abdullah with conspiracy to cause explosions following incidents in London and Glasgow,” said Susan Hemming, an anti-terrorism prosecutor.
More in The Gate:
An Iraqi doctor is the first suspect to be charged in attempting bombings in London and Glasgow, AP reports.
[…] BBC News has just obtained new video of the Glasgow crash; it contains graphic images.
From Forbes:
Prime Minister Gordon Brown warned Britons to expect increased security measures to guard against more attacks, but he expressed confidence investigators were unraveling the group behind the bombing attempts in London and Glasgow.
“From what I know, we are getting to the bottom of this cell that has been responsible for what is happening,” Brown told British Broadcasting Corp.
Police have also searched a property in Cambridge.
British intelligence knew of suspects:
According to various British newspapers, several of those detained were on the databases of domestic intelligence agency MI5 as “people who knew people” that were under observation, according to unnamed government sources cited by the Daily Telegraph.
The Times also reported, citing unidentified security sources, that none of them were under surveillance as part of counter-terrorism operations.
Meanwhile, British media outlets carried comments from Canon Andrew White, who runs Baghdad’s only Anglican parish, in which he says a senior Al-Qaeda figure warned him back in April of plans to attack British targets, reportedly telling him “those who cure you will kill you.”
As evidence of the jittery situation back in Britain, meanwhile, London’s Heathrow Airport was closed for five hours, with thousands of passengers left stranded after police evacuated Terminal Four because of a suspect package.
Al-Qaeda links to terror plot:
British intelligence services also believe that the failed car bombings in London and Glasgow bear the fingerprints of al Qaeda in Iraq.
Intelligence sources tell CBS News that the people behind the attempts were directly recruited by Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, the present leader of the terror group’s Iraq franchise.
Sources say that al-Muhajir recruited people for the plot between 2004 and 2005, while they were living in the Middle East, upon orders from then-al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Al-Muhajir was told to recruit young men who could easily move into Western countries, assimilate and lay low until the time came to attack. Britain has a fast-track visa program for medical students which makes it easier for them to enter the country.
The belief that this small cell of militants was recruited purposely by a major terror organization for their specific qualifications differentiates the group from the cell of “homegrown” attackers who were behind the bloody July 7, 2005 attack that left 52 people dead on London’s transport network.
Some days ago, I linked to an article in The Observer by , an ex-Jihadist belonging to Al-Muhajiroun, who said that Jihadis laugh when Western politicians blamed terrorism on Western countries’ foreign policy (more today by Sugiero). Well, we have it again…:
Bilal Abdulla, one of the two doctors arrested after a blazing Jeep Cherokee rammed into the Glasgow Airport terminal on Saturday, is a deeply religious Iraqi who was angry that his prominent Sunni family “lost everything” following the 2003 invasion led by the United States and Britain, according to a close family member.
“He was hurt by the destruction of his family’s property in Iraq,” the relative said during a 2 1/2 -hour interview in Cambridge, England. “I think he wanted to be a martyr. He wanted to send out a message to withdraw troops from Iraq. He wanted to cause chaos and fear; he didn’t want to kill people. He fears God, and all he wanted to do was die.”
Yeah, right. There are no other ways to protest against democratic decisions of a sovereign country than to explode bombs but no… he did not want to hurt/kill anyone, he wanted to die only… So the bombs, what were they? Haagen Dazs chocolate ice-cream? Or French baguettes? Or Spanish horchata de chufa?
No, he has been charged of “unlawfully and maliciously conspiring with others to cause explosions of a nature likely to endanger life or cause serious injury to property in the United Kingdom” under the 1883 Explosive Substances Act. Exactly the kind of thing someone does without the intention of killing/hurting anyone. And…:
Police in Australia have also seized computers and other material as well as interviewing and subsequently releasing four doctors. A fifth doctor was also being questioned.
About Australian links click here:
Doctors as possible terrorists
“There seems to be some surprise that educated people such as medical professionals could become terrorists. However, a terrorist is a cognitive creation. People are not born terrorists and extreme behaviour does not depend on education or wealth. You can have extreme beliefs no matter whether you are a doctor, a religious person or a politician.”
More in MSNBC:
The seized computers had been used to communicate with Haneef, Keelty said. Haneef, who moved from the United Kingdom last year to take a hospital job in Gold Coast city in Queensland, is related to one of seven suspects in custody Britain, Saleeb Ahmed. The pair worked together at Halton Hospital in northern England in 2005.
Keelty said search warrants were executed at two others premises in Western Australia, which he did not identify.
Medical officials said Thursday that Ahmed, 26, and a second suspect in the British plot, Lebanese doctor Khalid Ahmed, 27, had unsuccessfully applied for medical jobs in the Western Australia public hospital system in the past two years.
State police, working with their federal counterparts, had interviewed four men overnight in connection with the investigation, seizing computers and communication equipment, state Police Deputy Commissioner Murray Lampard said.
You can also read Right Truth.
LONDON, July 5 — A 23-year-old Moroccan-born computer whiz who helped recruit suicide bombers for the al-Qaeda in Iraq insurgent group was sentenced to 10 years in prison Thursday in the latest case to illustrate Britain’s struggles to contain the spread of Islamic radicalism. Two collaborators were also sentenced.
Younis Tsouli, who described himself online as a terrorist James Bond, pleaded guilty to running a network of Web sites filled with al-Qaeda beheading videos and other propaganda from his home in London. Prosecutors accused him of acting as an electronic conduit between al-Qaeda in Iraq and militants from around the world looking for a way to volunteer for missions.
“He actually served as a kind of travel agent, setting up suicide bombers with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,” a top insurgent leader who was killed in a U.S. airstrike last year, said Evan F. Kohlmann, a New York-based private counterterrorism analyst who testified at the trial as a consultant for Scotland Yard. “He represents an unusual phenomenon: someone who is homegrown, who lives in the West, and has managed to make that jump into the world of real terrorism.”
And what these affable-peaceful guys were doing? [Also ugly… ]
A group of 45 Muslim doctors threatened to use car bombs and rocket grenades in terrorist attacks in the United States during discussions on an extremist internet chat site.
Police found details of the discussions on a site run by one of a three-strong “cyber-terrorist” gang.
They were discovered at the home of Younis Tsouli, 23, Woolwich Crown Court in south-east London heard.
Cool, ehh? And sympathetic these lads…
So we wouldn’t be totally surprised to hear former Imam Sam Solomon saying this:
A former Imam is warning that extremists are aiming to establish sharia law in the UK – and that Britain has become the world ‘number one target’ for Islamic strategists.
He writes: ‘The UK is the number one target of Islamic strategies in the West (because) the former British Empire controlled some of the largest Muslim communities. Immigrants from these countries… have taken full advantage of Britain’s liberal politics.’
A very good reasoning: 100 years ago, Great Britain was an empire. When it ceases of being so, Muslims from former colonies launch an attack against it.
Logic, what this people need is to have an Aristotelian logic class. Their reasoning fails always to cope with logical requirements.
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