Police take to streets to reassure Londoners

By Paul Majendie

LONDON (Reuters) – Four weeks after suicide bombers struck
the British capital, thousands of police took to the streets on
Thursday to reassure jittery Londoners as al Qaeda warned there
would be more attacks.

Underground rail stations swarmed with police, many of them
armed, as millions of commuters headed into work.

“It is certainly a very big police operation,” said Deputy
Chief Constable Andy Trotter. “We are out there to reassure
Londoners and also to deter any further attacks.”

Al Qaeda’s second in command Ayman al-Zawahri issued a
warning to Britain in a new video aired on Thursday.

“Blair’s policies will bring more destruction to Britons
after the London explosions,” Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s
deputy, said in a tape aired by Al Jazeera television.

Prime Minister Tony Blair, President Bush’s closest ally,
has consistently rejected the idea that Britain’s involvement
in the war in Iraq is linked to the attacks on London last
month.

On Thursday, the Piccadilly underground railway line was
fully operational for the first time since four British Muslim
suicide bombers killed 52 people on three trains and a bus on
July 7.

Offering an intriguing glimpse into the investigation, New
York police chief Raymond Kelly said the bombs were made from
simple ingredients like hair bleach. Three of them were set off
by mobile phones, he said.

“It’s more like these terrorists went to a hardware store
or some beauty supply store,” Kelly said.

According to U.S. media reports, he said the explosives
were stored in refrigerators and then shipped in coolers to a
railway station outside London where the bombers took a train
to the capital.

His briefing, partly based on information from New York
officers sent to London to monitor the police inquiry, was the
first detailed account of the methods used by the bombers.

In another wave of attacks two weeks after the first, four
bombs failed to detonate and, after the biggest manhunt in
British history, four suspects were arrested, including one
seized in Rome.

NERVES FRAYED

The police operation after the attacks — one of the
biggest ever seen in the British capital — is costing an extra
500,000 pounds ($890,000) a day, officials have said.

Undercover officers mingled with commuters trying to spot
would-be bombers while the massive coverage by uniformed
officers was designed to make people feel safer.

Nerves in London are still frayed. Panicked passengers
smashed windows and jumped from the upper deck of a bus on
Tuesday after a small fire developed, apparently accidentally.

A 23-year-old man arrested after the failed July 21 attacks
has been charged under British terrorism laws with hindering
the police investigation by protecting a possible suspect.

Ismael Abdurahman, who appeared in court on Thursday and
was remanded in custody until Aug. 11, is the first person to
be charged as part of the investigation into the attacks but is
not one of the four men suspected of trying to set off the
bombs.

British police believe all four men they had been hunting
over the July 21 attacks on three underground trains and a bus
have now been captured.

Three are in custody in Britain and a fourth in Rome.
Britain has formally requested that Italy extradite Hamdi
Issac, arrested last week in Rome, and officials say they hope
the extradition process will be completed by the end of the
year.

(Additional reporting by Michael Holden, Gideon Long and
Kate Holton)