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UK police hunt mastermind behind London bombings

Posted on: Wednesday, 13 July 2005, 07:33 CDT

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.

Source: REUTERS

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