The arrested fugitives from the botched July 21 London bomb attacks faced an intense grilling as police were congratulated on Saturday for seizing all four suspects in a massive international manhunt.
Dramatic raids in London and Rome left the alleged bombers in police custody as detectives were feted for rounding up the men on the run.
Police sources said the three named men in British custody, Yassin Hassan Omar, Muktar Said Ibrahim and Ramsi Mohammed, are being held at the country’s highest-security police station, Paddington Green.
Machine-gun-toting British police were seen by witnesses firing tear gas and apparently setting off stun grenades as they raided two apartments in west London on Friday, arresting three men in all.
Among these were at least one and probably two of the four suspected bombers who went on the run when their explosives failed to detonate fully on three London subway trains and a double-decker bus.
Police feared that while the bombers remained at large, they might have tried once more to repeat the July 7 carnage, when 56 people, including four British Muslim suicide bombers, were killed in a similar string of attacks.
Experts speculated on the methods police will use to try to uncover the shadowy network behind the suspected bombers.
The terror suspects can look forward to a fortnight under the microscope in the Paddington Green basement.
“You’re completely cut off. Mentally, it’s really tough. It could break anyone,” 42-year-old John, an ex-soldier and one-time Paddington Green detainee, told the Daily Mirror newspaper.
“When you arrive, you’re locked in a 15 foot by 10 foot [3m by 3,6m] cage like an animal.”
Louise Christian, who represented former Guantánamo Bay detainees, said in The Independent newspaper that police will rely on the “good cop, bad cop” routine to extract information.
Psychology expert David Canter said police have a big advantage over the would-be suicide bombers.
It is unlikely the failed bombers were trained in how to handle such an interview, University of Liverpool Professor Canter wrote in The Times.
“It would rather undermine the commitment to kill yourself if your handlers ran a session on what to do if it failed.”
‘Got the bastards’
Britain’s newspapers hailed the police’s swift captures in the biggest operation they have faced since World War II.
The Times said the arrests would come as a relief to all in Britain and were “a tribute to a police force that has passed one of the most severe tests in its history”.
“Got the bastards” said the front page of The Sun, Britain’s biggest-selling daily.
Security forces “combined brilliantly to corner 21/7 bombing suspects like rats in a trap”, the tabloid said.
“What a magnificent day for British justice,” said the Daily Express in its editorial.
The Guardian compared the London bombers to the Irish Republican Army (IRA), which on Thursday committed itself to peaceful means after three decades of bloodshed aimed at ending British rule in Northern Ireland.
“In the end, the IRA gave up bombing because it got them nowhere. In the end, the same thing will happen with the reactionary jihadists.”
“Only a fool would think this is the end of the attacks on the United Kingdom,” warned The Sun. “But for the time being, let’s celebrate a triumph of police work.”
The head of the anti-terror branch at London’s metropolitan police, Peter Clarke, confirmed on Friday that one man held in west London said his name was Muktar Said Ibrahim, already named by police as a suspected bomber.
A second man arrested in the same raid identified himself as Ramsi Mohammed, Clarke said, without confirming Mohammed is one of the four suspects.
However, Britain’s Press Association news agency reported that police believe he is the one fugitive who was not previously identified.
Another suspect, Somali-born Yasin Hassan Omar, had already been detained on Wednesday in Birmingham, central England.
‘Fourth attacker’ arrested in Rome
Italian Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu announced that Somali-born Briton, Osman Hussain, whom he called “the fourth attacker in London on July 21”, was arrested in Rome.
Clarke said he was of “interest” to British officers.
Another man was arrested during a separate raid in west London.
Police said two women were still in custody on Saturday morning after being arrested on Friday at London’s Liverpool Street mainline railway terminus, on the eastern edge of the city centre.
A witness said he saw two women wearing Islamic scarves pinned down by officers after they ran away when stopped for a routine check.
Detectives were continuing to search a building in the Old Kent Road area of south London early on Saturday in connection with the July 21 attacks.
Police sources said the property in question was a previous address linked to one of the bombers.
British newspapers said on Saturday that a man in Zambian custody linked to the London terror bombings had told officials he was once one of al-Qaeda terror network chief Osama bin Laden’s bodyguards.
British embassy staff in Zambia were trying to establish whether the mastermind behind the July 7 attacks had been arrested in the country.
British police and the Foreign Office have refused to confirm United States reports that Haroon Rashid Aswat, a Briton previously named as the suspected planner of the July 7 attacks, is the captured man. — AFP