British police on Saturday interrogated at least three suspected bombers wanted for the July 21 London attacks as they tried to crack any wider terrorist network and trace the masterminds behind the operation.
A fourth suspect was, meanwhile, fighting an extradition request in Italy, where he was arrested on Friday after being traced through calls from his cellphone as he fled Britain five days after the bungled attack.
Britain was also understood to be seeking access to the reported ringleader of the deadly July 7 attacks, British national Haroon Aswat, who was arrested in Zambia on July 20.
Forensic experts were scouring an apartment block in west London where two of the suspected bombers were seized in a dramatic raid on Friday, amid top-level police warnings that the terrorist threat remained ”very real”.
At least four of the alleged June 21 bombers are now in custody — three in London and one Rome — but police have not confirmed media reports that a ”fifth bomber” who dumped his unexploded device in a west London park also had been caught.
The exhaustive forensic search was under way a day after three of the wanted men were caught in London and Rome.
Suspected Islamic extremists, they are accused of trying to blow up three subway trains and a bus in London on July 21. No one was injured in the attack because their home-made bombs failed to go off.
It was an attempt to repeat the deadly July 7 suicide bombing in London — the worst terrorist atrocity to date in Britain — that killed 52 people as well as the four bombers.
Zambian police confirmed on Saturday that Aswat, reported to be the alleged mastermind of the July 7 bombings, was arrested on July 20 in Lusaka. The British Foreign Office has said it is seeking access to a man being held by the Zambian authorities.
”His arrest follows ongoing security investigations on the threat of terrorism to which Mr Aswat is alleged to be connected,” Zambian police Inspector General Ephraim Maateyo said in a
statement.
”He entered the country on July 6. He is a British national and is currently in custody of Zambian security authorities.”
Aswat’s family said they fear he may be extradited to face torture in the United States, and criticised Britain’s handling of the situation.
”It is very worrying that after more than 10 days the British government is still unable to verify that the British citizen detained is actually Haroon,” they said.
In Rome, a lawyer for suspected July 21 bomber Osman Hussain (27) — also known as Issac Hamdi — said he will fight extradition to Britain after a preliminary extradition hearing at the Italian capital’s Regina Coeli prison.
”We wanted to make an attack, but only as a demonstration,” several Italian newspapers quoted Hussain as saying, without citing a source.
Italian justice ministry sources said supporting documentation required in the case of suspects held under the new European arrest warrant is expected from British police on Monday.
London metropolitan police anti-terrorist chief Peter Clarke said that despite Friday’s sweeping arrests ”we must not be complacent. The threat remains and is very real.”
Of the two suspects arrested during raids by heavily armed elite police in west London on Friday, Eritrean-born Muktar Said Ibrahim (27) is accused of trying to blow up a double-decker bus, while Ramzi Mohammed is suspected of trying to set off his device at Oval underground train station.
The pair were forced to emerge from an apartment half-naked to ensure they had not strapped explosives to their bodies.
The domestic Press Association agency reported that a third man arrested on Friday in nearby Tavistock Square, west London, was Ramzi’s brother, Wahbi Mohammed (23), but this has not been confirmed by police.
The BBC and Sky television said Wahbi was believed to be a fifth bomber who abandoned a home-made device that was found in a park near Tavistock Square on July 22.
A fourth suspected member of the July 21 bombing cell, Somali-born Yassin Hassan Omar (24), was detained in a raid in the central English city of Birmingham on Wednesday and is reportedly cooperating with police.
Hassan Omar is wanted for the attempted bombing of a subway train near Warren Street, while Hussain, who was traced to Rome through calls on his cellphone, is accused of trying to blow up a train at Shepherd’s Bush.
Italian Interior Minister, Giuseppe Pisanu, told Parliament that police had been able to ”document in real time” Hussain’s escape from Britain on July 26, five days after the attack, via London’s Waterloo train terminus.
Newspaper reports said police had tracked his phone signals to Paris on July 27 and picked up his trail again the day after in Milan and Bologna, before finally tracing him to Rome. — Sapa-AFP