/ 30 July 2005

Fourth London terror suspect arrested in Rome

A fourth suspect in the July 21 bombings in London was on Friday night being held in a Rome cell after being arrested by Italian police following an operation stretching across three countries.

Italy’s Interior Minister, Giuseppe Pisanu, named the suspect as Hussain Osman (27). He said Osman is a Somali-born naturalised British subject.

Rome’s chief anti-terrorist prosecutor, Franco Ionta, was on Friday night questioning the suspect. Police sources said he was detained on a warrant issued by a British court.

Italian media reports said Osman is suspected of the failed attack at Shepherd’s Bush. This would identify him with the man caught on closed-circuit television at Westbourne Park station.

According to initial reports, Osman was arrested at in the Centocelle area of south-eastern Rome. Italian news reports quoted police sources as saying he had been traced to the Italian capital by the cellphone he was using.

The phone, belonging to a relative who lives in Rome, was understood to have been used on July 21 at one of the locations linked to the bombings. The relative was variously identified as Osman’s brother and brother-in-law.

According to one report, the suspect left London on Wednesday. Police monitored the phone in London, Paris, Milan and finally Rome. According to the RAI TV network, Osman was holding the phone in his hand when police burst in on him late on Friday afternoon. He was said not to have resisted arrest.

Rome’s prefect, Achille Serra, said on Friday night that the operation was ”the result of splendid cooperation between Rome and London”.

But the news that Osman had slipped across at least two international borders also prompted renewed calls in Italy for the scrapping of the European Union’s Schengen agreement, which creates open borders between states.

Roberto Calderoli, a minister in Silvio Berlusconi’s conservative coalition Cabinet, said: ”If the necessary controls had been carried out, then this individual would have been stopped at the frontier.”

Police said on Friday night that further searches were being carried out in Rome. But they said they did not believe Friday’s arrest was linked with any potential terrorist action in Italy.

Suspect charged in Zambia

Meanwhile, a British Muslim man being held by police in Zambia has been charged by the American authorities with being an al-Qaeda terrorist, it emerged on Friday.

Haroon Rashid Aswat (30), from Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, was charged over his alleged role in a plot to set up a terrorist training camp in Oregon more than five years ago.

Despite widespread media reports, however, he is not suspected of involvement in the London attacks of July 7 that claimed 56 lives, although British police and counter-terrorism officials may question him about possible links with one of the suicide bombers.

Aswat has been held in Lusaka, the Zambian capital, since crossing into the country more than a week ago.

A dispute has arisen between British diplomats, who have no objection to him being extradited to stand trial, and American authorities, who are understood to wish to see him subjected to a process known as rendition, which could see him taken to a country other than the United States, where he may be at risk of being tortured.

A hunt was launched for Aswat in the aftermath of the suicide bomb attacks as Scotland Yard tried to investigate possible links with Mohammad Sidique Khan (30), the eldest of the four suicide bombers.

Both men lived in the Dewsbury area of West Yorkshire, and there had been unconfirmed reports that they had been in telephone contact before the bombings. — Guardian Unlimited Â