Australia police search hospitals over UK bombs

Canberra, July 6: Australian police searched two hospitals in Western Australia today, switching the focus of their investigation into an Indian doctor held in connection with the plot to detonate car bombs in London and Scotland.

Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty said a second doctor in New South Wales state was also being investigated.

''We've seized similar material to what we have seized in Queensland,'' Keelty said of raids conducted on a hospital in Perth and another in the gold mining city of Kalgoorlie.

Yesterday a court judge in Queensland granted Australian police and a senior British counter-terrorism officer an extra 96 hours to question Mohamed Haneef, 27, who was detained at Brisbane airport on Monday as he tried to leave the country, under anti-terrorism laws.

Keelty said investigators were gathering information on Haneef before resuming formal questioning on Monday.

Police are examining 30,000 files on Haneef's laptop computer and a Sim card mobile phone device he left with one of the British bomb suspects.

Permission to extend Haneef's interrogation came as hospital authorities in Western Australia (WA) said two suspects in the suspected al Qaeda car bomb plot in Britain had applied to work as doctors in the state.

Brothers Sabeel Ahmed, 26, and Kafeel Ahmed, 27, had applied for work and were rejected over reference concerns, said Dr Geoff Dobbs, the WA president of the Australian Medical Association.

Reuters

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