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To: LindyBill who wrote (128941)	8/1/2005 2:12:33 AM
From: KLP	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793912

“The threat remains and is very real.” London faces lockdown to thwart third terror strike August 01, 2005 By Daniel McGrory and Sean O’Neill timesonline.co.uk THOUSANDS of police marksmen will be on London’s streets and rooftops again today after warnings that another team of suicide bombers is plotting a third attack on the capital. The new group is believed to be made up of British Muslims who were understood to be close to staging an attack on the Underground network last week. According to security sources the men are thought to be of Pakistani origin but born and brought up in this country. They have links with the Leeds-based terrorist cell that staged the July 7 attacks, in which 52 innocent people died. Even with the transport system so heavily guarded, police and intelligence sources believe that the bombers are intent on once more attacking London’s bus and Underground network. Another multiple suicide strike is also intended to demonstrate how the network can call on more recruits. The men are said to have access to explosives. US security sources said yesterday that this third group of would-be bombers met at Finsbury Park mosque in North London, where some of the July 7 terrorists are also known to have stayed. There are reports that this team originally planned to strike last Thursday, which is why more than 6,000 police, half of them armed, were present at Underground stations. Scotland Yard said at the time that this exercise, the biggest since the Second World War, was to test their resources and reassure a nervous public. As commuters return to work today police chiefs say that the arrest of five suspected bombers in house raids in Birmingham, London and Rome has not ended this threat. Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, head of the anti-terrorist branch, said: “The threat remains and is very real.” There is concern among ministers and police at how long officers can continue such an intensive operation to “lock down” London while a threat remains. Although reinforcements have been brought in and leave has been cancelled, resources are stretched to keep up the guard on the capital, which is costing £500,000 a day. Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, admitted that his officers were “very, very tired”. While the priority is to thwart another strike, police are still investigating links between the attacks on July 7 and the botched operation a fortnight later. They are also hunting for what officers describe as “key logistical players” behind the attacks. Seven more people — six men and a woman — were arrested in raids in Brighton yesterday, bringing the number of people under arrest in Britain to 18. A Scotland Yard spokesman said: “This is a further indication of the fact this is a fast-moving investigation and we continue to progress. We are searching for other people in connection with this ongoing inquiry. “There were quite a few other people involved in the incidents of the 7th and the 21st. It’s extremely likely there will be other people involved in harbouring, financing and making the devices.” The major link between the two sets of bombers is that the alleged leaders of both groups attended Finsbury Park mosque. Experts are studying similarities between the bombs used on July 7 and 21. Anti-terrorism officers are still questioning four of the failed bombers at Paddington Green police station while a fifth member of the team is being interrogated in Rome. Hussain Osman, who tried to blow up a Tube train at Shepherds Bush, told Italian police that the devices were only meant to scare passengers, not injure them. Scotland Yard dismissed that claim as “nonsense”. The devices, hidden in rucksacks, were studded with razor sharp nails and only failed to explode because of a clumsy mistake by the bombmaker. Sir Ian Blair said that the bombs were designed to kill and that London had a lucky escape. Ethiopian-born Hussain, 27, who has a British passport, claimed that the plot was orchestrated by another of those arrested on Friday, Muktar Said-Ibrahim. Hussain said that he had been recruited in an underground gym in Notting Hill. Immigration officials are trying to find out how he managed to slip out of Waterloo station on a Eurostar train to Paris and make way to Italy where he met his brother, who lives in Rome. Officials want to know why Hussain, who says his real name is Hamdi Isaac and who has Italian citizenship, came to Britain posing as a Somali asylum-seeker in 1996. There were reports last night that Muktar Said-Ibrahim, the suspected ringleader of the July 21 plot, was seen in Rome several weeks before the failed attacks. A mother and daughter living downstairs from the suburban flat where Hussain Osman was arrested on Friday, said that they had recognised Said-Ibrahim from footage of his arrest in London. Two of Hussain’s brothers who live in Italy are also being held. One is accused of sheltering him; the second was picked up yesterday in the northern town of Brescia. Italian police say they are using Hussain’s phone records to unpick the international network that has been helping him. Alfredo Mantovano, an Interior Ministry official, said that the network “confirms the presence in our country of autonomous Islamic cells . . . which could represent a concrete threat.” Italy is worried that it is the next target for Islamic terrorists.

To: LindyBill who wrote (128941)	8/2/2005 1:56:02 AM
From: KLP	Respond to of 793912

Where's Amnesty when you need them?: NYT~~Egypt Police Kill Suspect in Bombings nytimes.com By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Published: August 2, 2005 CAIRO, Aug. 1 (AP) - The Egyptian police on Monday tracked a man who they said was a major suspect in the Sharm el Sheik bombings to a mountain hide-out and killed him in a shootout in which his wife was fatally wounded, the authorities said. A police official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak with the press, said the couple's 4-year-old daughter had also been wounded. The suspect, Saleh Flayfil, 30, a Bedouin, was also wanted in bomb attacks last year at the Taba resorts in the Sinai. Egyptian officials said they had discovered evidence that he was hiding out in a quarry in Mount Ataqaa, 17 miles east of the Cairo-Suez highway, the Interior Ministry said. "Approaching the area in order to cordon it off, security officers were fired upon from the location, whereupon they immediately dealt with the attack," the statement said. Mr. Flayfil was killed in the exchange of fire, and his wife was wounded and taken to a hospital, where she died of her wounds, the ministry said. Mr. Flayfil was being tried in absentia for the bombings in Taba in October that killed 34 people, and was a main suspect among 15 wanted in the Sharm el Sheik attacks of July 23. The death toll stands at 64, but hospitals say it could rise to as high as 88. Two car bombs and a bomb in a knapsack ripped through a luxury hotel, a neighborhood full of Egyptians and the entrance to a beach promenade in those attacks. Investigators are focusing on the likelihood that homegrown Islamic militant cells in Sinai, possibly with international links, carried out the bombings. Mr. Flayfil was a brother of Suleiman Flayfil, 31, one of the Taba attackers, who reportedly died in one of the explosions when he detonated his charges prematurely. In an interview last week, Mr. Flayfil's father, Sheik Ahmed Flayfil, said his sons turned their backs on him in 1995 after adopting extremist Islamic ideology. "No power on earth was able to take the poisonous ideas out of their minds," he said at the interview in his home in al Medan, six miles west of the Sinai town of el Arish. "It was very clear that they mixed with fanatic groups in el Arish."