Explaining the reduced threat level, Smith said last night that the “very latest intelligence” showed no indication that another attack is expected imminently. But she still urged the public to “remain vigilant.” The move was based on an assessment by the British government’s Joint Terrorism Analysis Center, and considered factors including capability, intent and timescale, Smith said.
While Britain may be relaxing a bit, other countries believed to be implicated in the origins of the plot went on a more watchful footing. Australia India, and several countries in the Middle East have all been tentatively linked by investigators to the British plot. At the moment, security officials believe that Iraq, where car bombs similar to those that failed in Britain are a regular killer, will be at the heart of their ongoing investigation. Earlier this week, Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, the Iraqi government’s national-security adviser, told CBS that he has been warning U.S. and British authorities for the past 18 months that Al Qaeda cells in Iraq were “systematically infiltrating operatives into Europe … targeting highly educated people.”
The suspect most obviously linking the London-Glasgow plot back to Iraq is Bilal Talal Abdullah, the 27-year-old Iraqi-British doctor who has been widely named in press reports as one of the two men in the Jeep that rammed into Glasgow airport on Saturday morning in an apparent suicide bombing attempt (British police revealed today that either Abdullah or his co-conspirator left a suicide note, according to widespread reports). Abdullah is currently in custody in London’s high-security Paddington Green police station.
Abdullah was born in Aylesbury, in southeast England, but grew up in Iraq after returning to the country with his parents when he was a young child. He moved back to Britain around 2004 to practice medicine. It is possible that a Baghdad-based extremist sheik, Ahmad al-Qubeisi, an outspoken supporter of suicide bombers, was instrumental in helping to radicalize Abdullah. According to an interview with one of Abdullah’s U.K.-based uncles, published in the Guardian newspaper today, Abdullah spoke highly of Qubeisi, even calling the sheik his “best friend” and leading his uncle to believe the sheik had “brainwashed” Abdullah. Investigators are likely examining whether Abdullah had any ties to Al Qaeda in Iraq, which was headed by the infamous Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi until he was killed in a U.S. airstrike one year ago.
Abdullah has direct connections to many of the other eight suspects, investigators believe. He worked at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in the Glasgow suburb of Paisley with three of the other men who have been arrested—including the two still unnamed suspects (both widely reported to be Saudi doctors), and the driver of the Jeep that rammed Glasgow airport, Kafeel (or Khalid) Ahmed, another young doctor from Royal Alexandra Hospital. Ahmed is currently in critical condition, having suffered burns on 90 percent of his body during the failed attack. Abdullah may also be linked to suspect Mohammed Asha, 26, a Jordanian neurologist, and his wife, Marwa Dana Asha, 27, a lab technician. The couple was arrested by antiterror police as they drove along the M6 motorway in Cheshire, England, with their 2-year-old son last Saturday just after 9 p.m. According to several unconfirmed media reports, Abdullah met Asha when they were both living and studying medicine in Cambridge around 2005.
Abdullah is believed to have met the remaining suspects, Mohammed Haneef and Sabeel Ahmed, through his colleague Kafeel Ahmed, who is suspected of helping Abdullah attack Glasgow airport. Ahmed is a cousin of Mohammed Haneef, the 27-year-old Indian doctor who was arrested in Brisbane, Australia, while trying to board a one-way flight to India on Tuesday. Unofficial police reports coming out of India today allege that Ahmed is the older brother of the final suspect, 26-year-old Sabeel Ahmed. Speaking on Indian national television this week, the Ahmed brothers’ mother, Zakia, a retired professor at Bangalore Medical College, talked of Sabeel. “He is a doctor,” she said. “His surrounding people are all doctors. Who there among them is a fundamentalist? … I [am] in shock.”
