Laden suspected behind Glasgow bomb blasts

London, July 6: The London and Glasgow bomb plots were carried out with approval of Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader, a foreign intelligence source revealed here today.

''It was an established fact from day one that Al-Qaeda was behind this and it was planned by its followers in Great Britain with Bin Laden's blessing," the source told The Times.

However, the British security officials only said that it was too early to comment whether the plot was masterminded by some foreign hand or hatched in Britain itself.

The warning an al-Qaeda leader in Iraq delivered to Canon Andrew White, a British cleric working in Baghdad, in April certainly suggested that he knew of the doctors' plot. "Those who cure you will kill you," the man said.

Reports also claim that Bilal Abdulla, 27, the Iraqi doctor who allegedly helped to drive the Jeep into the front of the Glasgow airport last Saturday, disappeared for a year during his medical training in Baghdad and is believed to have visited Pakistan or Lebanon .

According to a friend who attended the Medical College of Baghdad University along with Dr Abdulla told he was a religious fanatic, and that in 2001 or 2002 he mysteriously abandoned his studies for a year. "There was some talk that he went outside Iraq to develop his religious culture. I heard that he went to Lebanon or Pakistan," the friend said.

On his return he adopted a much more intense demeanour and isolated himself from his former friends. "He became more radical, but not to the degree that he took part in actual actions or clashes.'' Dr Abdulla was born in Britain, where his father was working as a doctor, and has a British passport. His family returned to Baghdad when he was five. He showed religious leanings from an early age, attending Friday prayer each week and even sounding the call to prayer from his grandfather's mosque.

It is believed he met some of other suspects during the several periods he spent living in Cambridge. Police are presently searching several properties in the city.

The other suspect Khalid or Kafeel Ahmed, the man with whom Dr Abdulla drove a jeep into Glasgow airport is thought to be another key figure, but he remains critically ill in the Royal Alexandra hospital in Paisley and his true role and identity remains unclear.

He was originally believed to be a doctor working at that hospital and the brother of Sabeel Ahmed, 26, the Indian doctor arrested in Liverpool last Saturday.

The Australian Medical Association said yesterday that a Khalid Ahmed applied numerous times, using slightly different names, to work as a doctor for the Western Australia Department of Health between February 2005 and January 2006. He was repeatedly rejected because his professional qualifications and character references were inadequate.

"It was quickly picked up in the process that he was the same person," a spokesman said.

Ahmed had also applied to work for the Western Australia Department of Health in January 2006. But could make only make one unsuccessful application.

Investigators are still trying to find out precisely how the eight suspects knew each another, but sources told The Times that a few could soon be released without charge.

UNI

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