Bomb probe widens to Egypt, Arrests in Pakistan

LONDON - Egyptian police today questioned a British-trained biochemist about last week's London suicide attacks, and Pakistan arrested four people as it investigated possible al Qaeda links to one of the bombers.

Magdy Elnashar, a 33-year-old researcher at Leeds University, who also studied in the United States, was being questioned about the attacks that killed more than 50 people and injured 700 on July 7, Egypt's Interior Ministry said.

Elnashar, an Egyptian, left England for a 45-day holiday before the bombings and intended to return, an Interior Ministry source said. He had denied any knowledge of the attacks, in which four suicide bombers struck three underground trains and a double-decker bus.

An acquaintance said he could not believe Elnashar might have been involved in London's worst attack since World War Two.

"He had a great personality. You would never ever expect this kind of action from him. Impossible," said Kadhem al-Rawi, a doctor in Islamic principles from an institute in Wales.

Newspapers said he had rented a house in Leeds that was raided by police on Tuesday. Large amounts of suspected explosives were seized.

London police chief Ian Blair said officials were monitoring "developments in Egypt very carefully, and if it is necessary we will send officers there or we will seek extradition or whatever other processes are necessary".

A Leeds University spokeswoman said Elnashar had received a doctorate in biochemistry in May, studying "chemically inactive substances" with applications for the food industry. He was sponsored in his studies by the Egyptian government.

Media reports said Elnashar had studied at North Carolina State University, where spokesman Keith Nichols said a "person with that name was here in the spring of 2000" as a full-time graduate student for one semester.

AL QAEDA LINK

Separately, Pakistani intelligence sources said one of the London attackers met in 2003 with a man later arrested for bombing a church in the Pakistani capital Islamabad.

Pakistani security agencies, investigating possible links between militant groups based in Pakistan and Shehzad Tanweer, who blew himself up in a train near Aldgate underground station, arrested four men on Friday in the central city of Faisalabad.

But a spokesman for one of the groups, a hardline Islamic charity organisation called Jamaat-ud-Dawa, denied any links.

Three of the four bombers, including Tanweer, were British Muslims of Pakistani descent and lived in Leeds.

One of them, 30-year-old teaching assistant Mohammad Khan, toured parliament a year ago as part of a school group, Labour member of parliament Jon Trickett who organised the visit, said on Friday.

Police said 54 people were killed in the blasts, including two of the bombers. Two other bombers have yet to be formally identified.

The government said on Friday it intended to bring in laws making it an offence to get training in terrorist techniques.

In Leeds on Friday, Iqbal Sacranie, secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain called on Muslims, Jews and Christians to cooperate with the investigation.

Imam Shaykh Abdullah al-Judai told Friday prayers at Leeds Grand Mosque: "Prevent the recklessness of extremism, even if you have to inform the authorities. Such is the command of Islam.

"Islam considers this a crime which we condemn. No Muslim scholar has ever supported such acts through 14 centuries of Islam's history."

London police chief Blair said detectives were confident they would find a link between the British bombers and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda group.

Warning that another attack is "a strong possibility", Blair said the hunt was on for the financiers and bomb makers who supplied the young killers.

The BBC, citing sources close to the investigation, said the explosive found in Leeds was TATP (triacetone triperoxide), made from freely available ingredients.

It said the material is thought to be similar to that used by "shoe bomber" Richard Reid who tried to blow up a transatlantic flight in 2001 with explosives in his shoes.

- REUTERS