Posted on 07/28/2005 9:10:00 AM PDT by David Hunter
Details have emerged about some of the men suspected of carrying out the attempted bombings of Tube trains and a bus on 21 July in London.
FIRST SUSPECT: MUKTAR SAID IBRAHIM
Muktar Said Ibrahim, 27, also know as Muktar Muhammad Said, is suspected of leaving the explosive device on the back seat of a number 26 bus, in Hackney, on 21 July.
He arrived in the UK in 1992 from Eritrea in east Africa as a child refugee, with his family.
Brought up in Stanmore, Middlesex, he attended Canons Hill school in Edgware, north-west London.
A convicted violent criminal whose teenage gang was responsible for a string of muggings, Ibrahim was sentenced to five years for robbery in early 1996.
He qualified for early release after serving two and a half years at Huntercombe Young Offenders' Institution and Woodhill Prison.
Friends say he smoked cannabis and was known as a troublemaker as a youngster but became radicalised in jail.
Once he turned round and said, 'You white honkey!' then punched me in the face - School friend Wayne Howard
In recent years he was said to have been a devout Muslim, wearing Islamic dress and growing a beard.
Police are investigating whether he prayed at the Finsbury Park mosque, in north London, where radical cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri preached, or Brixton mosque, in south London, which the convicted shoe-bomber Richard Reid attended.
In November 2003 he applied to become a British citizen, and was given a British passport in September 2004.
The Home Office was unable to comment on how he was able to obtain a British passport despite his criminal record.
Wayne Howard, who still lives in Stanmore, told BBC News he met Ibrahim at school in 1991.
'Behavioural problems'
"He always had a tendency to fight - that was clear," he said.
"He was always known to teachers for his behavioural problems - fighting or lack of work.
"He would be fine, with the teachers and pupils, and then something could escalate that would change the whole situation and he would go off on one - fighting or verbal.
"His mood was always up or down - we would have a laugh together and then something could spark him off - one minute we were fine and the next we were fighting.
Ibrahim's "broken English" meant he "struggled a bit" and asked for extra spelling and English language lessons, but he was "always good at sport" and played competitive cricket , football and basketball," Mr Howard said.
Ibrahim shared a flat with Yasin Hassan Omar, the man suspected of the attempted bombing of a Tube train near Warren Street station on the same day.
Police began searching the flat on the ninth floor of the New Southgate tower block in north London on Monday.
SECOND SUSPECT: YASIN HASSAN OMAR
Yasin Hassan Omar, 24, is suspected of the attempted bombing of a Victoria Line train, near Warren Street, on 21 July.
Police used a Taser stun gun when they arrested him on Wednesday morning in a raid on the Hay Mills area of Birmingham.
He arrived in the UK with relatives as a 12-year-old refugee from Somalia and in May 2000 was granted indefinite leave to stay in Britain.
For six years, Omar was the registered tenant of the flat in the New Southgate tower block being searched by police, and received up to £24,000 in housing benefit.
THIRD SUSPECT
A man seen at Stockwell underground station at around 1225 BST on 21 July got on a northbound Northern Line train.
Somewhere between Stockwell and Oval, he attempted to detonate a bomb before leaving the train at Oval, police say. Passengers reported hearing a bang and seeing smoke in a carriage.
The suspect was chased by what police describe as brave members of the public, but he escaped and headed along Brixton Road towards Brixton.
He was caught on CCTV cameras on the passenger concourse at 1234, seconds before leaving the station by vaulting over a ticket barrier. He was wearing a dark sweater with the words New York on the front.
FOURTH SUSPECT
A man wearing a dark blue baseball cap and carrying a small rucksack entered Westbourne Park Tube station, in west London, just after 1220 BST.
A CCTV picture of him was taken at 1221 at the station.
He caught a train heading for Shepherd's Bush, just two stops away, on the Hammersmith and City Line.
In between the two stations - at about 1225 - he tried to detonate a bomb, which failed to explode properly, police said.
A witness said they heard a bang like a "pistol going off", and saw a fellow passenger lying on the floor on top of a smoking rucksack.
The suspect jumped off the train at Shepherd's Bush - probably through a window at the end of the carriage - and moved along the tracks, which at this part of the line are above ground.
Yes, they gave British citizenship to an asylum seeker who had lived on state welfare handouts for years, was a convicted violent criminal and had been sentenced to five years in a Young Offenders' Institution and a Prison in the UK for violent robbery in early 1996. Well done Home Office! Unbelievable.
With friends like these, who needs enemies?
Last year an Islamist plot to manufacture and use ricin in terror attacks on London was foiled. The leader of the plot was a failed asylum seeker from Algeria called Kamel Bourgass. The Police raided his flat and found the precursor materials for ricin, but no ricin. However, during the raid he murdered DC Stephen Oake who was one of the Police officers sent to arrest him and stabbed two of his colleagues.
Bourgass had been refused political asylum in the UK and refused it again when he appealed, but he was not deported, then in 2002 he was arrested in East London for shoplifting. He was reported to the immigration authorities while he was in Police custody but no enforcement officer was available to interview him or take him into custody! Magistrates could have deported or detained him, as he was an illegal immigrant, but instead they fined him £70 and freed him.
The Metropolitan Police Commissioner then tried to claim that national ID cards would have helped the authorities stop Bourgass's plot, but they already had his fingerprints and photo on file anyway so the proposed ID card scheme would have made no difference and it would obviously have been better to deport him after his asylum appeal failed. To conclude, the NuLabour government's skewed priorities have once again let the British people down and yet no one in the leftist UK electronic media bats an eyelid.
One method MI5 has used in the past is to leave obvious rabble rousers in place, so as to have a way to get into the terrorist networks. They would have been watching people like Abu Hamza and keeping those who go to his sermons and contact him under surveillance. I agree though that their public calls for attacks on the USA and UK were beyond the pale and they should have been stopped from doing those things.
U.S. wanted to arrest man believed to have ties to July 7 bombers
Washington – A month before the July 7 attacks were carried out, British authorities balked at permitting U.S. authorities to arrest Haroon Rashid Aswat, sources familiar with the investigation said Thursday.
British authorities now suspect he lent support to the suicide bombers, whose attacks killed 52 morning commuters.
-snip-
According to the sources, U.S. officials had located Aswat in South Africa and asked the government if they could take Aswat into custody. South Africa relayed the request to Britain, but authorities there refused because he was a British citizen, the sources said.
While the debate continued, Aswat slipped away. Article
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