LONDON – As investigators on Sunday explored international links to four British Muslims behind the July 7 suicide bombings of three subway trains and a double-decker bus, officials prepared to introduce tough anti-terrorism legislation today that would make it a crime to incite, foster or glorify terrorism.
Six more arrests were reported in the northern city of Leeds, following the detention last week of one man who knew the alleged bombers. But police said there was no connection with the London bombings.
| Muslim condemnation: Britain’s largest Sunni Muslim group on Sunday issued a religious edict condemning the July 7 transit bombings as anti-Islamic and said the Quran forbade suicide attacks. Refugee screening: Charles Falconer, the secretary for constitutional affairs and lord chancellor, dismissed claims that Britain was not diligent in screening political refugees from Muslim countries, making the country a fertile recruiting ground for Islamic terrorism. Leeds search: Investigators in the northern city of Leeds continued to focus on an Islamic bookshop and a house near the home of one of the four alleged bombers. Associated Press |
“At this stage these arrests are not being linked to the events in London,” West Yorkshire Police said in a statement.
Police continued to comb through seven of 10 residences raided in Leeds and Aylesbury during the past week, searching for clues to the methods and motivations behind the blasts that killed at least 55 people, including the four bombers.
But the focus of the investigation moved from the former neighborhoods of the suspects to their reported connections with the global terrorism network directed by al-Qaida.
At least eight people have been arrested in Pakistan in the cities visited earlier this year by Shahzad Tanweer, the 22-year-old cricket enthusiast who police say blew up a Circle Line train near the Aldgate underground station in a coordinated rush-hour attack with at least three accomplices. Tanweer, reportedly accompanied by Mohamed Sidique Khan, who reportedly bombed the Edgeware Road station, visited Islamic schools in Lahore and Faisalabad during a three-month visit that ended in February, British newspapers reported.
Pakistani intelligence officials have told journalists in Islamabad that Tanweer met with Osama Nazir, a member of the radical Jaish-e-Mohamed organization, during a 2003 visit to Faisalabad. At least four of those arrested in the wake of the London bombings were rounded up in that city, from which Tanweer’s father emigrated in the 1960s.
British and Pakistani investigators have also begun examining Tanweer’s phone records in their search for links between the bombers and possible instigators of the attack who could be hiding in the mountainous border area with Afghanistan. Al-Qaida mastermind Osama bin Laden has long been suspected of taking refuge in the warren of caves and subterranean safe-houses in the remote region.
An Egyptian who recently completed a doctorate in chemistry at Leeds University, home of three of the suicide bombers, remained in custody in Cairo for a third day. The Egyptian Interior Ministry said it has no evidence tying 33-year-old Magdy el-Nashar to the London bombings but held him for British interrogators who arrived in Cairo on Saturday.
Nashar rented the Leeds apartment where police found traces of explosives of the type used in the London bombings, as well as in other al-Qaida-linked blasts.
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