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Jul 15, 2005 4:33 pm US/Mountain

(CBS/AP) - Authorities arrested an Egyptian chemist who studied in the United States and investigated a possible al Qaeda connection in Pakistan as the search widened for those behind London's suicide bombings, officials said Friday.

Magdy Mahmoud Mustafa el-Nashar, 33, who was arrested in Cairo, denied any role in the attacks, the Egyptian Interior Ministry said in a statement. He was taken into custody after the July 7 transit bombings and was being questioned, it said.

No charges have been filed against him. London police said a man has been arrested in Cairo, but they would not confirm his name or characterize him as a suspect in the attacks that killed at least 54 people, including four bombers.

Also Friday, police in Leeds raided a shop selling Islamic books and DVDs just blocks from where at least two of the four suicide bombers lived, and they seized materials.

CBS News Correspondent Elizabeth Palmer reports the police investigation is evolving very fast, but that's little comfort to Britons who heard London's police chief tell them today that another attack remains a strong possibility.

Muslim leaders have said the young bombers might have been inspired by radical literature. It was not immediately clear whether any of the four bombers had links to the shop, but neighbors speculated that the owner or manager may have met the suspects there.

Palmer (video) reports el-Nashar rented the apartment used as the bomb-making lab and may have been the technical brains of the operation.

An earlier search of a flat in Leeds rented by el-Nashar found evidence of explosives similar to those used in the failed 2001 shoe-bombing plot involving Richard Reid, according to The Times of London.

U.S., British and Egyptian officials had been in contact concerning el-Nashar following the blasts, according to an Egyptian government official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was providing information not in the ministry's statement.

El-Nashar was vacationing in Egypt and had intended to go back to Britain to continue his studies, the ministry said, without specifying the date he was taken into custody.

"El-Nashar denied having any relation with the latest events in London. He pointed out that all his belongings remained in his apartment in Britain," it said.

British and FBI officials had been looking for el-Nashar, who recently taught chemistry at Leeds University, north of London.

Leeds University said el-Nashar arrived in October 2000 to do biochemical research sponsored by the National Research Center in Cairo, Egypt. It said he earned a doctorate May 6.

FBI agents in Raleigh, N.C., had joined the search for el-Nashar. North Carolina State University spokesman Keith Nichols said a person named el-Nashar studied there as a graduate student in chemical engineering in early 2000.

Detectives who searched el-Nashar's flat found signs that quantities of a compound called TATP, or triacetone triperoxide, had been converted into a powerful explosive, the Times of London reported.

In 2001, Reid used an improvised shoe bomb rigged with TATP, which is difficult for bomb-sniffing dogs to detect, when he tried to board an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami and blow it up over the Atlantic. Reid was subdued by passengers when he tried to detonate the explosive. He pleaded guilty to U.S. charges and is serving a life sentence.

TATP is a highly unstable explosive made from commercially available chemicals.

Terrorists "like it because its ingredients are easy to obtain and difficult to detect," explosives expert Hans Michels tells Palmer.

A spokeswoman for London's Metropolitan Police refused to comment on the report or say what type of explosive was used in the attacks.

Andy Oppenheimer, an explosives expert with Jane's Information Group, said TATP is strong enough to have caused the damage wreaked by last week's bombs.

But he added that making such a highly volatile explosive stable enough to carry out closely synchronized attacks would have required advanced knowledge of chemistry. Police say the three subway blasts happened within a minute.

The New York Times and the British Broadcasting Corp. also reported that TATP was found in a search of a Leeds home.

Earlier, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair said investigators were hunting the organizers of the London transit attacks — perpetrated by what he called "foot soldiers" — and confirmed police were focusing on a Pakistan connection.

Three of the bombers who carried out last week's terror strikes were Britons of Pakistani descent. Pakistani intelligence officials said Friday that local authorities are looking into a connection between one of the three and two al Qaeda-linked militant groups in that country.

Blair told the BBC that police believed they would discover an al Qaeda connection to the blasts.

"What we expect to find at some stage is that there is a clear al Qaeda link, a clear al Qaeda approach, because the four men who are dead, who we believe are the bombers, are in the category of foot soldiers," Blair said.

Authorities in Pakistan, meanwhile, were looking into a connection between one of the London suicide bombers and two al Qaeda-linked militant groups in Pakistan, including a man arrested for a 2002 attack on a church near the U.S. Embassy, two senior intelligence officials said.

The investigation is focusing on at least one trip that 22-year-old Shahzad Tanweer made to Pakistan in the past year, said the officials, who work at two separate intelligence agencies and are involved in the investigation. They spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of the secretive nature of their jobs.

One of the officials said that while in Pakistan, Tanweer is believed to have visited a radical religious school run by the banned Sunni Muslim militant group Lashkar-e-Tayyaba.

The sprawling school in Muridke, 20 miles north of Lahore, has a reputation for hostility. Journalists who have traveled to the school in the past have been threatened and prevented from entering.

Lashkar-e-Tayyaba was banned by Pakistan for alleged links to a 2001 attack on India's Parliament.

ABC News, citing unidentified officials, reported that the attacks were connected to an al Qaeda plot planned two years ago in Lahore. Names on a computer that authorities seized last year from Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, an alleged Pakistani computer expert for al Qaeda, matched a suspected cell of young Britons of Pakistani origin, most of whom lived near Luton, where the alleged suicide bombers met on their way to London shortly before last week's blasts, according to the report.

Authorities have now discovered ties between Mohammed Sidique Khan — one of the July 7 bombers — and members of that cell who were arrested last year, ABC said.

In another international development in the inquiry, Jamaica's government said it was investigating a Jamaican-born Briton as one of the bombers. Reports identified him as Lindsey Germaine.

On Thursday, police released closed-circuit TV video showing one of the four suicide bombers — 18-year-old Hasib Hussain — wearing a backpack as he passed through the Luton train station on his way to London.

Hussain allegedly set off the bomb that killed 14 people aboard the bus. That blast occurred nearly an hour after three London Underground trains blew up, and investigators don't yet know what Hussain did during that hour or when he boarded the bus.

Trying to map out Hussain's movements, police appealed for information from anyone who may have seen him in or around King's Cross station, where the four parted ways.

Police officially identified two of the suicide bombers Thursday — Hussain and Tanweer, whom they say attacked a subway train between Liverpool Street and Aldgate stations.

News reports have identified the fourth bomber as 30-year-old Mohammed Sidique Khan.

Hussain's family issued a statement Friday, saying they were devastated by the attack and had no idea he could have been involved.

"We had no knowledge of his activities," his family said, adding that had they known, they would have stopped him. "We urge anyone with information about these events, or leading up to them, to cooperate fully with the authorities."

It was Hussain's mother who gave investigators a key break in the case when she called them the night of the bombings to report him missing. Her description of Hussain's missing clothes led police to conclude that he was the likely attacker in the bus bombing that killed 14 people.

Minister: Al-Zarqawi Fled Baghdad Recently

July 15, 2005

By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA - Associated Press Writer

The Associated Press

BAGHDAD, Iraq The leader of Iraq's most feared terror group fled Baghdad about two weeks ago because a U.S.-Iraqi military operation in the capital was threatening his al-Qaida movement, Iraq's interior minister said in a television interview aired Friday.

Bayan Jabr told the U.S.-owned Al Hurra television that the Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and many of his al-Qaida in Iraq followers fled Baghdad because of the success of Operation Lightning, launched May 28.

Despite claims that the operation was successful, at least 30 people were killed in a wave of car-bombings and roadside explosions in the capital Friday. Jabr said "the terrorists" often have more weapons than the police.

He nonetheless claimed many al-Qaida members had left the capital "because they have lost the battle." Al-Zarqawi fled Baghdad 12 days ago after several car-rigging factories were discovered in a security operation, he said.

"Al-Zarqawi is in his last months," Jabr added.

In the past, Iraqi officials have variously placed al-Zarqawi in the Fallujah area west of Baghdad and in eastern Iraq. Some accounts claimed he had even been wounded and had fled to Iran, a charge the Iranians deny.

Jabr also confirmed that several detainees had suffocated in a police vehicle last weekend because it was new and officers did not know how to use the air conditioner.

Major Sunni Arab groups expressed outrage over the deaths of about 10 Sunnis who were detained after a gunfight and suffocated after being locked in a van without air conditioning for hours in 115-degree heat. The minister said three officers had been arrested in the case and that there were also allegations of torture.

British police face doubts in Egypt over bombing role of Egyptian

Fri Jul 15,10:50 PM ET - This undated photo shows Egyptian Magdy Mahmud Mustafa Nashar. Egyptian officials said Nashar, the alleged bomb-maker in the July 7 London terror attacks has been arrested in Cairo, where he is being interrogated(AFP/HO)

Updated on 07-16-2005 at 02h50

LONDON (AFP)

British police investigating the London bombings confronted doubts in Egypt about whether an Egyptian biochemist, arrested in Cairo during a visit from England, was involved in the plot.

Officials at the Egyptian interior ministry said Magdy Mahmud Mustafa Nashar, 33, detained in Cairo on Thursday, was "being investigated to find out whether he was involved in the bombings that recently took place in London".

"He has denied any involvement," said a ministry statement, adding that Nashar had lived in Britain since 2000, studying for a doctorate at Leeds University, and that he was planning to return.

Interior Minister Habib al-Adly said Nashar "has no links with the Al-Qaeda network," which British police suspect was behind the July 7 bombings that claimed the lives of 54 people on three London subway trains and a bus.

In a statement published Saturday in the government daily Al-Gumhuriya, the minister said media reports about Nashar "are unfounded and are only hasty deductions."

ABC News in the United States claimed that the Cairo arrest might have produced the man who made the bombs that went off July 7.

The Egyptian interior ministry said Nashar had gone to Britain to study at Leeds University and had resided in Britain since 2000 until now to obtain his doctorate, which he did earlier this year.

Previous reports in Britain said police were seeking a suspect with a similar name who had been studying chemistry at Leeds University, in the northern city where three of the suspected bombers lived.

London's Metropolitan Police said it was "aware" of an arrest in Cairo, but declined to give further details into what a spokeswoman called a "fast-moving investigation" that has taken on a multi-national character.

Metropolitan Police commissioner Sir Ian Blair confirmed on BBC radio that there was "a Pakistan connection" to the bombings, in which three of the four suspected perpetrators were Britons of Pakistani origin.

But he added: "There are also connections in other countries."

In Islamabad, security officials said Britain had given Pakistan a list of suspects with possible links to the London attacks, while two Islamic religious schools denied having hosted one of the youthful suspected bombers, Shehzad Tanweer, 22.

The Times newspaper quoted unidentified sources as saying that Nashar was "of interest" to the investigation and that the anti-terrorist branch plans to send detectives to Egypt to speak to him.

In Leeds, investigators broadened their search Friday to an Islamic bookshop, the Iqra learning centre, around the corner from Tanweer's home.

Commissioner Blair said: "What we expect to find at some stage is that there is a clear Al-Qaeda link, a clear Al-Qaeda approach."

"The four men who are dead and who we believe to be the bombers -- though we have only confirmed two identities absolutely -- are in the category of foot soldiers," he said.

"What we've got to find is, who encouraged them? Who trained them? Who's the chemist? Those are the things in which we are now so interested."

BBC television's "Newsnight" programme said evidence of acetone peroxide, used to make the powerful explosive TATP, had been found at a home in Leeds linked to one of the bombers.

It was the same type of explosive that Al-Qaeda "shoe bomber" Richard Reid tried to detonate on a Miami-bound flight in December 2001, three months after the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington that killed some 3,000.

The development suggests that the explosives used in London were homemade, and not of military origin as had initially been thought.

Blair described the BBC report as "reasonably fair".

Meanwhile, about 20 senior Muslim theological leaders in Britain Friday condemned the bombings in London and said those who carried them out could not be considered martyrs.

"We regard these acts as utterly criminal, totally reprehensible, and absolutely un-Islamic," they said in a statement read by the imam of the central mosque of the English Midlands city of Leicester, Mohammad Shahid Reza, on their behalf.

In addition to Tanweer, Hasib Hussain, 18, is the only other suspect named by the police.

Press reports have widely named a third -- like the other two a Briton of Pakistani heritage living in or near Leeds -- as Mohammed Sadique Khan, 30.

The fourth is said to have been a 19-year-old Jamaican immigrant to Britain, living in Aylesbury, northwest of London, who changed his name from Lindsay Germaine to Lindsay Jamal when he converted to Islam.

The Times said Jamal was said by US intelligence sources to have been on a terror watch list and was monitored when he visited relatives in the United States, but he had dropped "off the radar."

Fresh Israeli air strikes in Gaza as violence surges

16 Jul 2005 07:18:22 GMT

Source: Reuters

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA, July 16 (Reuters) - Israel launched fresh missile strikes in Gaza early on Saturday, a day after it killed six Hamas militants, and vowed to keep targeting gunmen to prevent rocket attacks ahead of its withdrawal from Gaza next month. The latest air raid injured two Palestinian bystanders and destroyed three workshops in Gaza City and the Khan Younis refugee camp, which the army said was used by Hamas to produce weapons. Palestinians denied weapons were produced there.

Militants hit back on Saturday morning, firing two rockets at the Israeli town of Sderot, near the Gaza Strip. One of the rockets slammed into the courtyard of a house but nobody was hurt, the army said. The other landed in an empty field.

One Israeli woman has been killed and two others wounded in rocket barrages on Israeli towns and villages near Gaza over the past two days. The Israeli army said since Thursday militants have fired 25 rockets and 52 mortars.

The flare-up of violence in Gaza and the West Bank, which began on Tuesday when a Palestinian suicide bomber killed five people in an attack in the coastal town of Netanya, has badly undermined a cessation to hostilities declared by Israel and the Palestinian Authority in February.

It has also raised the prospect of a disruption to Israel's planned pullout of 8,500 settlers from occupied Gaza next month which had stirred new hopes of reviving Middle East peace.

Palestinian Interior Minister Nasser Yousef said the Israeli missile strikes were unjustified and would create more tension. He added that the Palestinian leadership was trying to salvage the truce which he said no faction had the right to end.

Faced with a collapsing truce, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arranged an unscheduled visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories next week to "encourage both sides to take appropriate seps to restore order," a spokesman said.

"They need to make (a) maximum effort ... both individually and working together, to ensure that this withdrawal is a successful withdrawal," said Sean McCormack, State Department spokesman.

SHARON VOWS TO STOP MILITANT FIRE BEFORE WITHDRAWAL

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has said the army would put a stop to rocket barrages and attacks by Gaza militants ahead of the withdrawal which is scheduled to begin in mid-August with the evacuation of all 21 settlements in Gaza.

Israeli military officials have said in the past they would carry out wide-scale raids and possibly reoccupy Palestinian areas near the settlements due to be evacuated to prevent the withdrawal from taking place under fire.

Israel massed several military vehicles around Gaza late on Friday and news reports quoted security sources as saying the Jewish state might raid militant strongholds in the area in the coming days to try to stop rocket launchers.

"The pullout can not commence under fire," Sharon told Channel 2 television in an interview on Friday night.

On Friday, an Israeli missile killed a Hamas militant in the West Bank and troops shot dead his comrade after he escaped and fired at them. A second raid killed four gunmen in a car in Gaza, which Hamas officials said carried makeshift rockets.

Hamas, sworn to Israel's destruction, has warned that the air strikes would "open the doors of hell" on Israel and said it was reconsidering its commitment to honouring the truce. (Additional reporting by Megan Goldin, Corinne Heller and Mohammed Assadi)

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