6 Doctors Among 8 Held In U.K. Bomb Plot
British police investigating three failed car bombings in London and Glasgow have searched 19 locations and arrested eight people, including six doctors, one of them arrested in Australia, reports CBS News.
CBS News confirms the eighth arrest was made Monday in Brisbane, Australia. The 27-year-old unidentified man is also a doctor who had been working in United Kingdom. Police are executing a number of search warrants across Queensland, including one at the hospital where the suspect worked, Australian authorities said. More arrests are expected.
Speaking in Canberra Tuesday, Australian Prime Minister John Howard said the doctor arrested is an Indian national. Howard at the same time revealed that a second doctor is being interviewed in relation to information given to counterterror authorities by the first.
Officials say both doctors worked at the Gold Coast Hospital in southeast Queensland and were both recruited from Liverpool.
The Indian doctor was arrested at the state capital Brisbane airport as he was about to leave the country Monday night. The second doctor was being interviewed by police Tuesday but has not been arrested.
Still another medical trail, reports CBS News foreign correspondent Mark Phillips, leads to Jordan, where Mohammad Asha - who was arrested Saturday in northern England - got his medical training.
British media reports named the second detained doctor as Bilal Abdulla, an Iraqi who was believed to have been arrested at Glasgow airport. The only two people arrested at the airport were the ones driving the Jeep Cherokee that crashed through the entrance.
According to the British General Medical Council's register, a man named Bilal Talal Abdul Samad Abdulla was registered in 2004 and was trained in Baghdad.
A third doctor, believed to be from India, was arrested in Liverpool Monday and is suspected of involvement in the Glasgow attack and in the two failed car bombing attempts in London, adds Phillips.
Phillips reports that investigators have called the burned Jeep Cherokee recovered from the airport entrance, "a gold mine" of evidence.
Two other men were arrested Monday as suspects in the car bomb attack on the airport, British authorities said. Strathclyde police said two men, aged 25 and 28, had been detained under the Prevention of Terrorism Act.
Meanwhile, U.S. security officials tell CBS News correspondent Bob Orr that they have found no U.S. connections to the U.K. terror incidents.
At this point, the FBI is not pursuing any domestic leads in this case, and government officials are referring all questions to British authorities, adds Orr.
Mohammed Asha seems a very unlikely terrorist, reports CBS News correspondent Sheila MacVicar. And although he has not yet been charged, there are suggestions that he is central to the plot to blow up two massive car bombs in the heart of London last Friday, and that he may be closely linked to the two men who attacked Glasgow airport on Saturday.
Asha was arrested along with a 27-year-old woman, believed to be his wife, as they drove on a major highway in Cheshire, in northwest England, in a joint swoop by officers from London and Birmingham.
Interviewed by CBS News at his home in Amman, Jordan, Asha's father said his son attended The Jubilee School in Amman, an elite high school initially founded by Jordan's Queen Noor in 1984 for children who show great academic promise. He graduated with straight A's in 1998.
Asha graduated from Jordan University's medical program in the summer of 2004 — at the top of his class — and then moved to Birmingham with his family, where he continued his medical studies. He was most recently a resident neurosurgeon at the University Hospital of North Staffordshire, in northern England.
CBS News confirms that in 2004 the current head of al Qaeda in Iraq was instructed by then-head Abu Musab al-Zaraqawi to recruit these people to move to the West and easily integrate until time came to strike.
CBS News has found a posting dated Feb. 20, 2006, by someone using the name Mohammed Asha, of Jordanian nationality, on an Islamic Internet chat forum. Referring to a cartoon depicting the Prophet Mohammed published by European newspapers, the post reads: "We have had to put up with you in the West for a long time. But now, after you insulted our prophet, we shall not forgive you."
The posting was found on a forum that did not appear to represent or be a regular platform exclusively for extremist view points.
An earlier statement posted online, signed by a "group of intellectuals," expresses support for the resistance in the Palestinian territories and condemns some Palestinian officials for calling it "terrorism". The name of Mohammed Asha appears among the signatories. The statement, found on the website of the al-Shaab newspaper, is dated July 19, 2002.
© 2009 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report. CBS News confirms the eighth arrest was made Monday in Brisbane, Australia. The 27-year-old unidentified man is also a doctor who had been working in United Kingdom. Police are executing a number of search warrants across Queensland, including one at the hospital where the suspect worked, Australian authorities said. More arrests are expected.
Speaking in Canberra Tuesday, Australian Prime Minister John Howard said the doctor arrested is an Indian national. Howard at the same time revealed that a second doctor is being interviewed in relation to information given to counterterror authorities by the first.
Officials say both doctors worked at the Gold Coast Hospital in southeast Queensland and were both recruited from Liverpool.
The Indian doctor was arrested at the state capital Brisbane airport as he was about to leave the country Monday night. The second doctor was being interviewed by police Tuesday but has not been arrested.
Still another medical trail, reports CBS News foreign correspondent Mark Phillips, leads to Jordan, where Mohammad Asha - who was arrested Saturday in northern England - got his medical training.
British media reports named the second detained doctor as Bilal Abdulla, an Iraqi who was believed to have been arrested at Glasgow airport. The only two people arrested at the airport were the ones driving the Jeep Cherokee that crashed through the entrance.
According to the British General Medical Council's register, a man named Bilal Talal Abdul Samad Abdulla was registered in 2004 and was trained in Baghdad.
A third doctor, believed to be from India, was arrested in Liverpool Monday and is suspected of involvement in the Glasgow attack and in the two failed car bombing attempts in London, adds Phillips.
Phillips reports that investigators have called the burned Jeep Cherokee recovered from the airport entrance, "a gold mine" of evidence.
Two other men were arrested Monday as suspects in the car bomb attack on the airport, British authorities said. Strathclyde police said two men, aged 25 and 28, had been detained under the Prevention of Terrorism Act.
Meanwhile, U.S. security officials tell CBS News correspondent Bob Orr that they have found no U.S. connections to the U.K. terror incidents.
At this point, the FBI is not pursuing any domestic leads in this case, and government officials are referring all questions to British authorities, adds Orr.
Mohammed Asha seems a very unlikely terrorist, reports CBS News correspondent Sheila MacVicar. And although he has not yet been charged, there are suggestions that he is central to the plot to blow up two massive car bombs in the heart of London last Friday, and that he may be closely linked to the two men who attacked Glasgow airport on Saturday.
Asha was arrested along with a 27-year-old woman, believed to be his wife, as they drove on a major highway in Cheshire, in northwest England, in a joint swoop by officers from London and Birmingham.
Interviewed by CBS News at his home in Amman, Jordan, Asha's father said his son attended The Jubilee School in Amman, an elite high school initially founded by Jordan's Queen Noor in 1984 for children who show great academic promise. He graduated with straight A's in 1998.
Asha graduated from Jordan University's medical program in the summer of 2004 — at the top of his class — and then moved to Birmingham with his family, where he continued his medical studies. He was most recently a resident neurosurgeon at the University Hospital of North Staffordshire, in northern England.
CBS News confirms that in 2004 the current head of al Qaeda in Iraq was instructed by then-head Abu Musab al-Zaraqawi to recruit these people to move to the West and easily integrate until time came to strike.
CBS News has found a posting dated Feb. 20, 2006, by someone using the name Mohammed Asha, of Jordanian nationality, on an Islamic Internet chat forum. Referring to a cartoon depicting the Prophet Mohammed published by European newspapers, the post reads: "We have had to put up with you in the West for a long time. But now, after you insulted our prophet, we shall not forgive you."
The posting was found on a forum that did not appear to represent or be a regular platform exclusively for extremist view points.
An earlier statement posted online, signed by a "group of intellectuals," expresses support for the resistance in the Palestinian territories and condemns some Palestinian officials for calling it "terrorism". The name of Mohammed Asha appears among the signatories. The statement, found on the website of the al-Shaab newspaper, is dated July 19, 2002.
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WAnt the public to believe differently? Let's see a Christian terrorist - let's see an Asian terrorist - let's see a black terrorist(who is not muslim) What?
Haven't got one? My goodness, where did we EVER get the idea that terrorists were all Islamic? Back to the drawing board.
It seems very important, but it is suspiciously non specific. Who are "these people"?
If it refers to the people arrested specifically then it should be the headline.
It should be explained or dropped from the story.
In general, it seems better for journalists to stop accepting the branding people as al-Qaeda without evidence of real organizational connection.
Filed under: Post, Indy Voter Indy Voter @ 05:00:19 pm
Fresh from tomorrow's headlines (actually, it's already tomorrow in Karachi) comes this Asia Times article indicating that Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has yielded to the wishes of NATO's forces in Afghanistan and will permit NATO forces to conduct hot-pursuit actions against the Taliban and al-Qaeda across the border into Pakistan. The article also says Musharraf will make an important address to his nation on this topic within the next couple of days.
Pakistan has resisted NATO's calls for the right to pursue these militants across the border since the Taliban were toppled from power in 2001. The policy made some sense then, even though it infuriated many in the west, because Pakistan does have a right to dictate to its allies who can conduct military operations within Pakistan's borders. However, imo Pakistan has failed badly in hunting down these militants within their borders, and with increasing unrest in the cities of Pakistan Musharraf will be even harder pressed to conduct military operations in these border areas than he already was. I welcome this change in policy from Musharraf, even if, as I suspect, it's being done reluctantly.
And on the strength of "suggestions", the media basically calls him a terrorist.
Let's hope they are *** good suggestions, backed up with evidence...
While the Progressives in the USA and UK would like to think that the "root cause" is economic, and if only these people had the resources and money and jobs they would be just like us, well it is not so. These were educated Doctors, and sometime during their Western training they were taught how to take care of burn patients, and I imagine that lesson did not stick.
WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE ? Where is the outrage ?
I am sure the UK colleagues were nice to these guys, even had them out to dinner.
We are brain washed. We believe that being nice to some one evil is all you have to do. Just talk, work things out. That , my friends , is out the window.
war is peace slavery is freedom ignorance is power
"terrorism is the best political weapon for nothing drives people harder than the fear of sudden death."
-Adolf Hitler