3 doctors detained in British plots

Article published Jul 3, 2007
By David Stringer
ASSOCIATED PRESS

LONDON — At least three physicians were among the suspects arrested in Britain's car-bomb plots, and authorities announced three new arrests — including a doctor in Australia — as the investigation spread overseas yesterday.

British media reports said an Indian doctor was among the eight persons in custody, and another outlet said at least five of the detainees in Britain were physicians. British police confirmed that a Palestinian doctor and Iraqi physician were among those held, and Australian officials said a foreign doctor working there had been detained in the case.

Bomb-disposal experts were called to Royal Alexandra Hospital in Glasgow, Scotland, yesterday to conduct a controlled explosion.

Officers used heightened stop-and-search powers and armed response vehicles to hunt for anyone who might have been involved in the plot, and police put on a show of force to bolster security at airports and train stations and on city streets.

Hours after police announced the arrests of two more persons in the Glasgow area, Australian authorities said they had detained an eighth suspect trying to leave the country from the airport in the eastern city of Brisbane.

Queensland state Premier Peter Beattie described the suspect as a 27-year-old "model citizen" but withheld his identity.

Australian Attorney General Philip Ruddock said the detained suspect was a doctor at a hospital in Queensland state and was not a citizen. Authorities said he was recruited in Liverpool, England, but completed his medical internship in India.

A British security official said earlier in the day that Pakistan and several other nations were asked to check for links to the suspects. British-born terrorists behind the bloody 2005 London transit bombings and others in thwarted plots here were linked to terror training camps and foreign radicals in Pakistan.

"We have asked partners overseas to check possible links and that work has begun," the security official said, adding that it was still possible that some British-born people were involved in the plot. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case.

Authorities said police searched at least 19 locations as part of the "fast-moving investigation," which has come at a time of already high vigilance before the anniversary of the suicide bombings in London that killed 52 persons on July 7, 2005.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who has said the group behind the weekend attacks was "associated with al Qaeda," got a call from President Bush commending him for Britain's response.

"President Bush concluded by reiterating that the United States is prepared to offer any assistance desired and noted the importance of continued cooperation," said Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for the White House's National Security Council.

Two U.S. counterterrorism officials, who agreed to discuss the case only if not quoted by name, said the attackers in Britain were Islamic extremists sympathetic to al Qaeda, but investigators were still trying to figure out whether there were any direct links.

One of the officials also said there continued to be concerns about possible plots to attack the United States, including the potential for a large-scale assault by al Qaeda.

In the latest attacks, two car bombs failed to explode in Central London on Friday and two men rammed a Jeep Cherokee loaded with gas cylinders into the entrance of Glasgow Airport and then set it on fire Saturday.

The British government security official said investigators were working on a theory that the same people may have driven the explosives-laden cars into London and the blazing sport utility vehicle in Glasgow.

The driver of the Jeep was being treated for serious burns at Royal Alexandra Hospital in Glasgow, where he was under arrest by armed police.

Police announced yesterday that they arrested two men the previous day at residences at the hospital but would not say whether they were doctors. Britain's Sky Television described them as trainee physicians, without citing a source for its report.

Four men and a woman were detained earlier.

Authorities identified Bilal Abdulla, an Iraqi doctor who worked at the Glasgow hospital, as the other man arrested at the airport and said he was being held at a high-security police station in Glasgow.

According to the British General Medical Council's register, a man named Bilal Talal Abdul Samad Abdulla was registered in 2004 and trained in Baghdad. Staff at the Glasgow hospital said Dr. Abdulla was a diabetes specialist.

A man arrested late Saturday on a highway in Central England was also a physician, Mohammed Jamil Abdelqader Asha, police said. A Jordanian official said Mr. Asha was of Palestinian descent and carried a Jordanian passport.

Britain's Independent and Muslim News newspapers reported that a man arrested in Liverpool late Saturday was a 26-year-old doctor from Bangalore, India, who worked at Halton Hospital in Cheshire, northern England. Police would not comment on the reports.

The Muslim News also said the Indian doctor had used the car, cell phone and Internet account of a fellow physician who had moved from England to Australia about a year ago. It said police had asked friends of the Indian for details about the man who went to Australia.

"

This case could be the final proof that an idea those involved in these type of attacks are all young, angry and poorly educated is a mistake," said Paul Cornish, a former British army officer and director of defense studies at London's Chatham House think tank.

"It's wrong to suggest al Qaeda are ignorant hill men. They are often middle- or upper-class and well-educated," Mr. Cornish said.

Former U.S. intelligence officer Bob Ayers, now a security analyst based in London, said wealth or intelligence matters little to people committed to extremism.

"We shouldn't be surprised that educated men are as involved as poor youngsters," he said. "They all subscribe to the same radical ideology, that's the only criteria they need to fill."

Salil Vengalil, a doctor at North Staffordshire Hospital, near the Midlands town of Newcastle-under-Lyme, said Dr. Asha worked in the neurology department at that hospital.

In Amman, Jordan, Dr. Asha's father, Jamil, denied that his 26-year-old son had any terrorist leanings.

"My son is a moderate Muslim and carried out his religious duties, but he never embraced fanaticism," he told the Associated Press.

Information also surfaced yesterday suggesting that authorities had been close on the trail of the suspects before the attack at the Glasgow airport.

Rental agent Daniel Gardiner, whose company leased a Glasgow-area house searched by police, said officers contacted his firm just before the airport blaze to say they had tracked phone records linked to the property.

Officials recovered at least one cell phone from the car bombs in London, Rep. Peter T. King of New York, the senior Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, said Friday after being briefed about the London situation.

As the investigation spread, police flooded London's subway and train stations, even clamping down on access to the Wimbledon tennis tournament, where concrete blocks were set in front of the main entrance.