Brits Seek Detained Bomb Suspect

British police continued holding three men suspected of trying to bomb London's transport network while an Italian judge on Monday began questioning the fourth alleged attacker after he was arrested in Rome.

Meanwhile, there is stepped up security on the transport system with the start of the workweek, and police policy is to stop and search people considered most likely to be a threat, reports CBS News correspondent Richard Roth. The chief of Britain's transport police was blunt about what that means -- saying, "We shouldn't waste time searching old white ladies."

Britain has requested the extradition of Hamdi Issac, 27, who is suspected of trying to bomb the Shepherd's Bush subway station in west London and was detained in the Italian capital on Friday. Issac's lawyer says her client is likely to fight the extradition bid.

Italian police gave a briefing Monday detailing how they tracked Issac to his brother's apartment in Rome. They also said the Ethiopian-born suspect used the fake name Osman Hussain and claimed he was a Somali in order to claim refugee status in Britain several years ago. They added that they expected to extradite him to Britain in a short time.

Italian newspaper Il Messaggero reported Monday that Issac started becoming a fundamentalist after attending London's Finsbury Park mosque, which has previously been linked to radical Islamic activity.

At the time he also met and became friends with Muktar Said Ibrahim — also being held over the failed July 21 bomb attacks — at a gym on the outskirts of London's Notting Hill district, according to Il Messaggero.

The two watched footage of the war in Iraq, said the Rome-based paper. It reported that Issac told investigators that the pictures prompted him to take part in the attempted attacks.

Issac was arrested in Rome at the apartment of his brother Remzi Issac, who also was detained.

On Sunday, Italian police detained a second brother, Fati Issac, for questioning.

In Britain, police were questioning the three other men suspected of trying to detonate bombs in London subway trains and a double-decker bus on July 21. In total, officers are holding 18 suspects in connection with the attacks, including six men and a woman arrested Sunday in Brighton, on England's southern coast.

Police say the four suicide bombers who carried out the July 7 attacks, which killed 52 victims, are all dead. And they believe they have arrested all the failed July 21 bombers, whose explosives detonated only partially and took no lives.

Police have dismissed speculation they're specifically concerned about another individual cell of attackers, but they do believe there are accomplices at large connected with both attacks last month, Roth reports. They believe all the bombers are accounted for, but they think there are suspects still at large who financed, or supplied or hid them.

Investigators are also searching for links between the two terror cells, one made up mostly of Pakistani Britons and the other mainly of east African immigrants to London. The groups struck exactly two weeks apart, each attacking three London Underground trains and a red double-decker bus.

A spokeswoman for London's Metropolitan Police said investigators believed there were more people at large who played some role in the attacks.

"It's extremely likely there will be other people involved in harboring (suspects), financing and making the devices," she said, speaking on condition of anonymity, because the department does not allow her to give her name.

Hamdi Issac's lawyer Antonietta Sonnessa says her client acknowledges his involvement in the failed July 21 attack but claims the planted bombs were intended not to kill anyone but only to draw attention. Italian news reports had said the bombers were angry about the Iraq war.

Issac also said his cell was not linked to either al Qaeda or the July 7 cell, Italian media reported.

Britain was facing questions about how Issac slipped out of the country five days after the attempted attacks, despite a massive police manhunt. Italy's Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu says Issac left London's Waterloo station by train for the Continent on July 26.