UK Terror Watch: MI5 Knew Four of the Car Bomb Plotters
AL-Qaeda’s Abu Musab al-Zarqawi may have ordered the bombers to go to Britain as a ‘sleeper cell’
MI5 knew four of the bomb plotters
As many as four of the NHS terror cell suspects were already known to security services, it emerged last night.
They had ‘crossed the radar’ of MI5 during previous anti-terror inquiries but were considered low priority.
Sources said there had been no suggestion the medics were planning anything like the failed car bomb attacks in London and Glasgow.
But at least one had featured in a surveillance operation, raising questions as to precisely what was known about them. The case echoes the disturbing disclosures that two of the July 7 suicide bombers, including ringleader Mohammed Sidique Khan, were seen during investigations into another terror cell but were also given a low priority.
Reports in the U.S. yesterday said key members of the NHS cell were recruited more than two years ago by terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed in Iraq last year.
Well, if this is true, the Brits dodged a bullet or a couple of car bombs which could have resulted in hundreds of deaths.
Let’s look at the history of the medical doctor bombers:
Dr. Kahlid Ahmed has been identified as the driver of the Glasgow Car Bomb
Dr. Bilal Abdulla arrested at the Glasgow Airport bombing
Dr. Bilal Talal Abdul Samad Abdulla, an Iraqi from Baghdad who arrived in the UK in April 2006.Dr. Bilal Abdulla has been transferred to Paddington Green high-security prison in London as the investigation continues
In an extraordinary piece of advance planning – a trademark of Al Qaeda – they were sent to Britain as ‘sleepers’ to await orders.
Zarqawi, who became head of Al Qaeda in Iraq and personally beheaded British hostage Kenneth Bigley, wanted men of an entirely different profile to the ‘homegrown’ July 7 bombers.
The reports came as investigators focused on Dr Bilal Abdulla, one of seven men and a woman under arrest. He was one of the two men who drove a blazing Jeep into an entrance of Glasgow Airport on Saturday.
The 28-year-old, the son of a leading Iraqi rheumatologist, arrived in Britain last August and took a job at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley.
In Iraq he was a member of the extreme Sunni Wahabist sect, which is aligned with Al Qaeda. Fellow medical students in Baghdad described him as ‘deeply religious’ with ‘extreme views of Islam’.
And this did not set off alarm bells?
Oh, it did!
Dr Abdulla, who was under investigation at the hospital because of his use of radical websites while on duty, lived in London for a time in 2003 before returning to Baghdad to complete his studies.
Investigators are trying to establish his contacts in London and whether he was a visitor to the Finsbury Park mosque, which has been linked to other Al Qaeda attacks.
Last night Dr Abdulla and two Saudi Arabian medical students arrested in Paisley were transferred from Scotland to top- security Paddington Green police station in West London.The second man in the blazing Jeep was named as Khalid Ahmed, also a doctor.
He suffered 90 per cent burns in the attack and police have not been able to question him.Dr Abdulla and Dr Ahmed are said to have been the men who drove two Mercedes car bombs into London’s West End early on Friday. They are now known to have returned to Glasgow via a complex route involving taxis, trains and coaches.
But, the question has to be asked: What did the MI5 know and when did they know it?
Five doctors, two trainee doctors and a hospital laboratory technician are now being held in connection with the attacks and police are checking medical records for a common theme.
They include Jordanian neurosurgeon Mohammed Asha, 26, his wife Marwah, 27, a laboratory technician, a 26-year-old Indian doctor from Liverpool and Dr Mohammed Haneef, 27, another Indian.
Dr Haneef was held at Brisbane airport on Monday as he prepared to leave Australia on a one-way ticket to India.
He was working as a registrar at the Gold Coast Hospital in eastern Queensland, but his previous post was at Halton Hospital in Runcorn, Cheshire, where the 26-year- old arrested in Liverpool also worked.
Dr Mohammed Haneef was arrested at Brisbane Airport as he tried to board a plane to Pakistan
Again, the Brits luckily dodged a car bombing or two. If those cell phone detonators had worked in London at the Tiger Tiger Club, events would not be so dandy.
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