An Egyptian man was arrested overnight in Cairo on suspicion of involvement in the July 7 London terror attacks, Egyptian security sources said on Friday.
They named the man as 33-year-old Magdy Mahmoud Nashar and said he was arrested ”late last [Thursday] night” and ”is being interrogated to see whether he is indeed the one everybody is talking about as being involved in the London bombings”.
They said Nashar was nabbed in Cairo’s southern suburb of Maadi, in the popular neighbourhood of Bassatin.
British police said on Friday they were ”aware” of an arrest in Egypt in connection with the investigation into last week’s London bombings.
”We are aware of an arrest made in Cairo, but are not prepared to discuss if we may or may not wish to interview [the person] in connection with this investigation,” a spokesperson for London’s metropolitan police said.
”This remains a fast-moving investigation with a number of lines of enquiry, some of which may have an international dimension.”
The United States network ABC News reported the arrest earlier on Friday, saying Nashar is the alleged bomb-maker behind the attacks on three London underground trains and a double-decker bus that killed at least 54 people and wounded about 700.
Citing sources including the FBI, ABC said the detained man is suspected of having helped set up the attackers’ bomb factory, and left Britain two weeks before the blasts.
Previous reports in Britain said police were seeking a man with a similar name who had been studying for a doctorate in chemistry at Leeds University, in the same city where three of the suspected bombers lived.
A British grant-awarding group said on Friday it had given the man financial support to pursue research which had an industrial application.
Britain gives Pakistan list of suspects
British police have given Pakistan a list of terror suspects with possible links to the London attacks, officials in Pakistan said on Friday, as two religious schools denied they had hosted one of the bombers.
Authorities are pursuing information on 22-year-old British suicide attacker Shehzad Tanweer, who reportedly studied at a religious school in Pakistan last year, according to security officials.
”They provided us with names of certain individuals for information following the London bombing. We are checking the linkages here,” a senior security official said.
”We have asked the British government to provide specific information regarding the movement of suspected bombers in Pakistan,” added the official, speaking anonymously because of the sensitive nature of the investigation.
Pakistani authorities are also investigating whether Tanweer had links to two militant groups, understood to be Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba, both involved in fighting Indian forces in Kashmir.
Both are known to have ties with Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network.
Jaish is loosely linked with the Jamia Manzoorul Islamia school in the eastern city of Lahore, which denied British press reports that Tanweer had studied there.
”We have no knowledge that anyone with the name of Shehzad Tanweer was enrolled in our madrassa. Our records do not confirm this name,” said Asadullah Farooq, son of madrassa leader Pir Saifullah Khalid.
”The allegation is baseless. We do not entertain foreign students; we only have Pakistani students,” he added.
Lashkar-e-Taiba also denied that Tanveer visited a campus formerly linked to the group in Muridke, near Lahore.
”We have checked our records. No one with this name and with British nationality ever stayed there. We do not have a policy of carrying out suicide attacks on civilians,” a spokesperson for the group said from Lahore.
Lashkar-e-Taiba was blamed for sheltering al-Qaeda fugitives who fled Afghanistan after the collapse of the hard-line Islamic Taliban regime in late 2001.
Security officials said Jaish teamed up with al-Qaeda to carry out several attacks in Pakistan, including a bombing that killed 11 French engineers in the southern city of Karachi in 2002.
It was also involved with an assassination attempt on Pakistan’s military ruler President Pervez Musharraf in December 2003, officials said.
Musharraf telephoned British Prime Minister Tony Blair late on Thursday to pledge his full backing for the inquiry into the bombings, state media reported.
”The president assured the British prime minister of Pakistan’s fullest support and assistance in the investigation of July 7 terrorist acts in London,” the Associated Press of Pakistan reported.
British man arrested in Pakistan
Separately, Pakistani investigators said on Friday they are questioning a British man arrested on suspicion of ties to terror groups, but he has no known links to the London attacks.
Zeeshan Siddique (25) was arrested on May 18 near the north-western city of Peshawar after sneaking into Pakistan on fake documents, and is being held at the city’s central jail, the officials said.
The New York Times reported on Friday that British authorities probing the carnage in London are focusing on Siddique and trying to determine if he had connections to the bombers.
”The suspect has no intelligence value in connection with the London attacks,” a senior interior ministry official said on condition of anonymity.
A foreign affairs ministry official also dismissed reports in local newspapers that a team of British police was flying out to Pakistan to interrogate Siddique. — AFP
