ISLAMABAD, July 16: Three of the July 7 London suicide bombers recently visited Pakistan, top security officials said on Saturday. Mohammad Sidique Khan, 30, and Shehzad Tanweer, 22, came together in November 2004, arriving at Karachi Airport, and returned to Britain in early February, two officials told AFP separately and on condition of anonymity.
Hasib Hussain, 18, the youngest of the three Pakistani-origin Britons, came separately at an undisclosed time last year, also to Karachi, and went back to Britain shortly afterwards, the officials added.
The security officials said they had not been able to trace the three men’s movements while they were in Pakistan.
“We are looking for their movements in Pakistan but so far we have not got anything concrete,” one of the Karachi-based security officials said.
Asked if they may have had contacts with a group led by alleged Al Qaeda number three Abu Faraj al-Libbi, who was arrested in northwestern Pakistan in May, one of the officials, said: “It is possible but we have no confirmation.”
The two officials said they had no confirmation that either Khan or Shehzad had visited any religious schools while in Pakistan.
Shehzad’s uncle has been quoted as saying his nephew studied at one of the schools.
“According to the efforts we have made so far we know that both Khan and Shehzad did not go to any known seminary here. But we are still checking,” one of the officials said.
Khan’s family said on Saturday their son must have been “brainwashed”.
Other Pakistani officials said there had been no arrests so far linked to the London attacks.
They dismissed media reports that four arrests made in Faisalabad, where Tanweer is said to have family links, were connected to the July 7 bombings and said they were only related to criminal cases.
TWO MORE SUSPECTS NAMED: British police on Saturday confirmed the identity of the last two London suicide bomb suspects, as Mohammed Sidique Khan and Germaine Lindsay.
“We can now confirm the identity of a third man who travelled from West Yorkshire and who died in the explosion at Edgware Road. He was Mohammed Sidique Khan, aged 30,” Scotland Yard said in a statement.
“We believe that he was responsible for carrying out that attack.”
“We can also now confirm the identity of a fourth man who arrived in London with the three men from West Yorkshire (in northern England) and then died in the explosion between King’s Cross and Russell Square underground stations.
“He was Germaine Lindsay. aged 19. We believe that he was responsible for carrying out that attack,” the statement said.
TWO DETAINED: In another report, an intelligence official on Saturday was quoted as saying that Pakistani security forces have detained two men in Lahore on suspicion of links with one of the suicide bombers in last week’s attacks in London.
The overnight detention came hours after the security agencies investigating connections with the bombings rounded up four suspects in the central city of Faisalabad.
Intelligence officials had earlier revealed that Shehzad Tanweer, one of the three British-born bombers of Pakistani origin, had visited Faisalabad and Lahore during his two trips to Pakistan over the past two years.
The security agencies are probing Tanweer’s links with militant groups and madrassas in Pakistan.
On Saturday, agents of two security agencies questioned teachers, students and other staff of Manzoor-ul-Islam, a madrassa in Lahore which Tanweer was thought to have visited in 2004.
Officials at the madrassa were not immediately available for comment.
Pakistani intelligence officials say Tanweer met Osama Nazir, a member of the Jaish-i-Mohammad, in Faisalabad in 2003.
Nazir was arrested last December for the 2002 bombing of a church in Islamabad that killed two Americans among others.
The intelligence officials say Tanweer, 22, made a second visit to Pakistan in late 2004 and had stayed in Lahore from December until last February.—Agencies
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