UK police hunt mastermind behind London bombings

By Michael Holden

LONDON (Reuters) – Police hunted on Wednesday for a
mastermind behind suicide bombings in London as the country
reeled from the news that the attackers, Muslims of ethnic
Pakistani origin, had been born and brought up in Britain.

Security experts said the first suicide bombers to hit
western Europe, killing at least 52 people, would have received
training and direction from a more senior Islamist militant.

That raised the prospect that a master bomb-maker was still
at large and prompted questions about whether future suicide
bombers had already been armed and instructed.

“I certainly think we have to organize ourselves on the
basis that there are other people prepared to act in this way,”
said Home Secretary Charles Clarke.

“We have to assume there are others who are ready to do the
kinds of things that these people did last Thursday.”

The bombers blew up three underground trains and a
double-decker bus last Thursday morning in an attack officials
say bore the hallmark of the al Qaeda network.

At least three of them came from West Yorkshire in northern
England, police said. The fourth was believed to be from the
same area, Sky TV reported citing a senior security source.

The three men identified by neighbors as the suspects were
aged between 19 and 30, members of the sizeable ethnic
Pakistani community around the city of Leeds. There was no sign
any had been known to security services as potential militants.

“They Were All British Bombers,” declared the front page of
the Daily Express newspaper, reflecting widespread shock, above
a picture of the birth certificate of suspect Shehzad Tanweer.

Friends and family said the 22-year-old was a
cricket-loving sports science graduate with no interest in
politics.

“I cannot believe it,” Bashir Ahmed, his uncle, told
reporters. “He wasn’t into politics at all so what drove him to
do it? It can’t be him, it must be something else behind him.”

A friend said Tanweer, believed to have blown up one of the
trains, was religious and visited all the mosques in the Leeds
suburb of Beeston.

In Pakistan, an intelligence official said Tanweer had been
in the Lahore vicinity from December to February and had stayed
at a madrassah, an Islamic religious school of the type widely
seen by security agencies as breeding grounds for militancy.

BLAIR PROMISES ACTION

The Muslim Council of Britain said it was stunned that
those claiming to share its faith seemed to be behind the
attacks.

“Nothing in Islam can ever justify the evil actions of the
bombers,” secretary-general Iqbal Sacranie said in a statement.

Prime Minister Tony Blair urged Britain to uphold
traditions of tolerance amid fears of a backlash against its
1.6 million Muslims.

He also said he would look urgently at a range of measures
to tackle extremism, including boosting efforts to stop people
entering the country to stir up hatred.

“Particularly with the shock of knowing that those that
have perpetrated this were actually born and brought up in this
country, I think it is particularly important we recognize the
worldwide dimension of this,” Blair told parliament.

In Brussels, Home Secretary Clarke challenged the European
Union to overcome civil liberties concerns and agree to new
anti-terrorism measures such as the compulsory storage of phone
and Internet usage records.

“I argue that it is a fundamental civil liberty of people
in Europe to be able to go to work on their transport system in
the morning without being blown up and subject to terrorist
attack,” he said.

The four suspects traveled to London on the day of the
blasts and were seen on closed-circuit television carrying
rucksacks at King’s Cross rail station shortly before 8:30 a.m.

A police source said they looked relaxed, more like they
were going on a hiking holiday than a suicide mission.

Police seized explosives after searching houses in the
Leeds area on Tuesday and arrested a relative of one of the
suspects, who was brought to London for questioning.

They carried out nine controlled explosions on a car in
Luton, just of London. They also found suspected explosives in
the car which they said was linked to the bombings.