Police detained a sixth doctor on Tuesday over the failed bombings in London and Glasgow, as Britain remained on maximum alert for another al-Qaeda-style attack.
A Jordanian neurosurgeon and an Iraqi doctor were also among eight suspects being questioned as the probe spread around the world with the detention of an Indian physician in Australia.
Underlining the jitters triggered by the car bombings, police carried out a controlled explosion on a car near a Glasgow mosque, while a terminal of London’s Heathrow airport was briefly evacuated due to a suspect package.
Security has been tightened across the country after the failed London bombings and a fiery attack at Glasgow airport, which triggered a hike in the threat alert to ”critical”, the highest level.
The Indian doctor was detained at Brisbane airport as he tried to leave Australia, Australian officials said.
Australian media named the man as Mohamed Haneef (27). He had been working since September in the Gold Coast Hospital in eastern Queensland state. A second doctor was also questioned in Australia, officials said.
British newspapers said up to five of the suspects already held in Britain were doctors.
Growing signs that those allegedly behind the attacks were foreign-trained doctors triggered consternation among British medical professionals.
”It shocked me to hear that a doctor could remotely be connected to the people who are trying to kill and maim people for no reason,” Prasad Rao, head of the British International Doctors’ Association, told the Guardian newspaper.
A potential link between Haneef and one of the suspects arrested in Britain also surfaced on Tuesday.
A spokesperson for North Cheshire Hospitals told Agence France-Presse that both Haneef and a doctor arrested in Liverpool had worked at the Halton Hospital near Liverpool. Haneef worked there until 2005, she said.
The suspects in custody include a Jordanian surgeon named by officials in Amman as Mohammed Jamil Abdelkader Asha, and his wife. The Jordanian’s offices in a British hospital were searched Monday.
British media identified one of the two Glasgow attackers as an Iraqi doctor named Bilal Abdulla.
Amid fast-moving developments, two men were arrested under anti-terror legislation in Blackburn, northern England, although police could not immediately say if they were linked to the London and Glasgow probe.
Police have said there are ”ever clearer” links between the London and Glasgow attacks.
The first arrests were made on Saturday when police detained two men who drove a blazing Jeep Cherokee loaded with gas canisters into the doors of Glasgow airport’s main terminal. One of them remains in critical condition in hospital.
That attack came just a day after two Mercedes cars laden with gas canisters and nails were found abandoned in London’s entertainment district.
Anti-terrorist officers later arrested a 26-year-old man and a 27-year-old woman, believed to be Asha and his wife, on a motorway in north-west England. They are now being questioned in London.
A fifth suspect, a 26-year-old man, was arrested in Liverpool on Saturday night. On Sunday, two other men, aged 25 and 28, were detained outside Glasgow.
Police were given permission on Monday to detain five of the suspects so far arrested until Saturday under anti-terror laws.
On Tuesday prosecutors said that three suspects held in Scotland over the Glasgow attack had been moved to England, to allow a ”single prosecution” with those behind the London attacks if charges are brought.
Meanwhile, Muslim leaders voiced concern over ”rising hostility” to their community triggered by the national terror alert.
Police are investigating possible racist motives for a couple of incidents this week in Scotland, including an attack on an Asian newsagent in Glasgow.
”In some ways it was expected as there was a backlash after September 11 and 7/7,” said Osama Saeed, the Muslim Association of Britain’s Scottish spokesperson, referring to the July 7 2005 suicide bombings which killed 52 in London.
”I think we did have a sense of foreboding about it. But we have got to stress to people we are in this together and we are all in the same boat. We have all been victims,” he said.
Britain’s main umbrella group of Muslim organisations strongly condemned the London and Glasgow attacks.
”Those who seek to deliberately kill or maim innocent people are the enemies of us all,” said Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, secretary general of the moderate Muslim Council of Britain. — AFP
