"Australian Police Question Indian Over U.K. Bomb Plot"

Wednesday, July 4, 2007

Australian Police Question Indian Over U.K. Bomb Plot
By Ed Johnson and Nick Allen
Bloomberg News

 
The damaged terminal at Glasgow International airport July 4 (Bloomberg) --
Australian police were given a further 48 hours to question an Indian doctor
arrested in connection with a terrorist bomb plot in the U.K. allegedly
planned by medics. 

Mohammed Haneef, 27, a registrar at a hospital in Australia's Queensland
state, was detained two days ago at Brisbane International Airport as he
tried to leave the country on a one-way ticket. 

Officers are investigating whether Haneef is linked to the June 30 attack on
Glasgow airport and attempted car bombings in London a day earlier. He'd
worked in the same hospital in northern England as one of the seven suspects
being questioned by British counterterrorism officers, the U.K.'s National
Health Service said. 

``We don't know yet whether the connection between this man and those
arrested in Britain is malign,'' Prime Minister John Howard told Channel
Seven television today. A senior officer from London's Metropolitan Police
force is traveling to Australia to question Haneef, he said. 

Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty said today that a second
doctor, who like Haneef moved to Australia from the U.K., was released
without charge after questioning. 

APEC Security 

Authorities are reviewing security for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation
summit to be held in Sydney in September, Agence France-Presse reported,
citing John Watkins, the acting premier of New South Wales state. 

``We are well prepared but, especially following the incidents in the U.K.
last week and closer to home, we continue to review those preparations. It
would be foolish to do otherwise,'' AFP cited him as saying today. 

Six men and a woman are in British custody in connection with the plot,
which prompted U.K. authorities to raise the terrorist threat level to
``critical.'' 

Officers on June 29 dismantled two car bombs made from gas canisters,
gasoline and nails parked in the heart of London's theater and shopping
district. One day later, two men were arrested after ramming their Jeep
Cherokee, filled with flammable material, into a terminal entrance at
Glasgow airport. 

Haneef is one of at least four non-British doctors affiliated with the
U.K.'s National Health Service to be held in connection with the bombing
plot. 

He worked as a substitute doctor at the Halton Hospital in Runcorn, northern
England, until 2005, a spokeswoman for the North Cheshire NHS Trust said
yesterday. One of the men held by British police worked at the same
hospital, she added. 

Emergency Leave 

Haneef began working at the Gold Coast Hospital in Queensland in September.
He was given emergency leave two days ago after telling hospital officials
his wife in India was unwell, the district health service said today. 

``He is innocent,'' said Haneef's mother Qurrathunain, 48, in an interview
at her home in the Indian city of Bangalore today. ``He is being targeted
because he is a Muslim.'' 

She said Haneef's wife gave birth to a baby girl 10 days ago and that the
child is sick with jaundice. ``He should have come home yesterday,'' added
the mother. 

Al-Qaeda warned in April of impending attacks on British targets and
suggested they could be carried out by medics, the London-based Times
newspaper reported today, citing Canon Andrew White, an Anglican minister
working in Baghdad. 

White told the newspaper he met a member of the terrorist network at a
conference on religious reconciliation in the Jordanian capital, Amman. ``He
talked to me about how they were going to destroy British and Americans,''
the Times cited White as saying. ``He said the people who cure you will kill
you.'' 

Prime Minister Gordon Brown's government has stepped up security in the U.K.
Controls were tightened at airports and more police are patrolling public
areas, including London's two financial districts, the City and Canary
Wharf. 

Sniffer dogs are checking cars entering the Canary Wharf complex in east
London, where companies such as Citigroup Inc, HSBC Plc and Lehman Brothers
Holdings Inc have offices.

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