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London Police Net 9 More in Sweep Predawn Arrests Made in Failed Attacks

Posted on: Friday, 29 July 2005, 12:00 CDT

The British police arrested nine men in predawn raids in South London on Thursday in connection with the failed bomb attacks on July 21.

The arrests, in the Tooting neighborhood, came a day after the arrest in Birmingham of Yasin Hassan Omar, 24, a Somali suspected of being one of the four men who took part in the attacks. The London transportation system was on precautionary high alert on Thursday, with the police standing guard at Underground stations, three weeks after the bomb attacks of July 7 on three Underground trains and a bus. The attacks killed 56 people, including the four suicide bombers. The news of the arrests Thursday came a week after the failed bomb attacks, again on three London Underground trains and a bus.

Despite the arrest of Omar, who is suspected of planning the failed attack on the Warren Street station, the police said they still did not know where the three other bomb suspects were and did not know the identity of two of them. On Wednesday, they issued a new photograph of an unidentified man suspected of planning an attack on the Shepherd's Bush station on July 21.

On Thursday in Tooting, the police raided an apartment above a Turkish kebab shop and took away three men, believed to be of Turkish origin. Six other men were arrested from a nearby property opposite the Tooting Broadway Underground station, news reports suggested.

Rajakumar Rajalingam, 28, who runs a 24-hour convenience store next to the restaurant, said dozens of officers raided the property at 4:30 a.m. "Police stopped me outside my shop," he said. "They didn't allow me to get in. They said they have to raid the kebab shop next to mine and the flat on top of the shop. I saw 25 policemen armed with machine guns. At 5:30 they arrested three people who were in the kebab shop."

Rajalingam said he had known one of the men arrested for more than two years. The man is from Turkey and in his mid-40s, he said.

The owner of the restaurant, Ahmet Ali, from Cyprus, said the police had ordered him not to open the shop.

"Three of my employees who work in the shop during the nighttime use one room in the flat to sleep there," he said, adding that the police had arrested all three.

The arrest of Omar, who was being questioned by the police Thursday in London, was the most important breakthrough in the investigation of the bombing campaign.

Three other men were arrested Wednesday in a second house in Birmingham and were held there. Later Wednesday, houses were raided in Finchley and Enfield in North London, and the police raided a house near the Stockwell Underground station in South London, where they arrested three women under antiterrorism laws.

Omar, suspected of involvement in the attacks on July 21, was taken in the Small Heath area of central Birmingham, in a predawn raid Wednesday, with he police using a stun gun to subdue him after he scuffled with officers. The police evacuated about 100 homes on the tree-lined street where Omar was staying. Bomb-disposal officers were called to examine a suspicious package there. The arrests widened the terror investigation to another major British city. They also focused scrutiny on an East African connection. The police are searching for Muktar Said Ibrahim, a 27-year-old originally from Eritrea. They believe he was involved in the failed bombings on July 21.

Ian Blair, the London police chief, warned the British public that the failure of the attacks on July 21 "should not be taken as some indication of weakening of the capability" of the bombers. "This was not the B-team; these were not amateurs," he said.

He added: "I am confident that we will identify and find the bombers responsible." But he said it remained possible that the bombers would strike again.

Prime Minister Tony Blair said in London on Wednesday that "we are greatly heartened by the operations today," adding that "it's an important development."

The arrests in Birmingham, 190 kilometers, or about 120 miles, north of London, came on a day of intense police activity that included the detention of a man at the airport in Luton before he boarded a plane to Nimes, in southern France. He was later released. Late Tuesday, the police removed two men from a train in Lincolnshire, in the British Midlands, and held them under the antiterrorism laws. The train was headed to the King's Cross train station in central London. On Wednesday, the Lincolnshire police said the men had no connection to terrorism and released them. No arrests were made at the two properties in Enfield and Finchley, but the police were carrying out forensic examinations. On Tuesday, officials at Scotland Yard said they had found traces of explosives at an apartment in North London, where one of the suspects from the attacks on July 21 had lived. Chemicals were also found in the garage of the complex. The three women were arrested in Stockwell after a raid at about 6 p.m. on Wednesday evening, in an apartment close to the Stockwell station in South London, the BBC said. As the investigation unfolded, the body of a Brazilian man fatally shot Friday by the police in a London Underground train arrived in his homeland Thursday for burial. In a television interview, Blair, the London police chief, said there had been 250 incidents since July 7 in which the police believed they were pursuing a suicide bomber. Seven came close to ending like the case of Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian who was shot in the head in the Underground station.

In a related development Wednesday, the police released a man who was arrested last week after the attacks of July 21, The Associated Press reported. ***

Mark Landler of The New York Times contributed reporting.

Source: International Herald Tribune

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