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Two men were being questioned by counter-terrorism agents in Brisbane last night in connection with what appears to have been a terror cell formed by foreign doctors to bomb London and Glasgow.
A 27-year-old Indian doctor working at a Queensland hospital was arrested as he boarded a one-way
flight from Australia on Monday night.
A second man, also reported to be a doctor, was taken in for questioning as a result of preliminary interrogations.
The Indian, a registrar at Gold Coast Hospital in Southport, was taken into custody on information from British authorities.
The Queensland Medical Board named him as Dr Mohamed Haneef.
Haneef's records show he graduated from the Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences in India in 2002. He has been working at the Gold Coast Hospital since last year on a temporary skilled worker visa.
Police raided his Gold Coast apartment, taking away computer discs and a rubbish bag full of other items.
The Australian Federal Commissioner, Mick Keelty, said Haneef might walk free after the investigation. "One of the areas we're trying to establish at the moment is whether in fact there's any evidence against Dr Haneef."
Mr Keelty said federal police had gained search warrants on advice from Britain.
"The grounding for the search warrants was that we were alleging that Dr Haneef was connected to a terrorist group. Beyond that, it is subject to the investigation, and the evidence may or may not be forthcoming," he said.
The second man had not been identified last night.
In Britain, five foreign doctors and two other suspects have been arrested after last week's failed bid to detonate car bombs in London and Glasgow.
Doubts remain about the connections between the two men arrested in Brisbane and the apparent hospital-based British cell, and about that group's possible links with al Qaeda or other organised terror groups.
British reports have speculated that al Qaeda has tried to use the respectability of medicine as a cloak for new attacks, while the unprofessional and badly executed nature of the failed bombings could also suggest a plot by amateur extremists.
"Al Qaeda are normally better organised than this," said Australian National University terrorism expert Dr Michael McKinley.
Neither of the men detained in Queensland was on the watch lists of Australian counter-terrorism agencies.
Premier Peter Beattie said Haneef was described by hospital colleagues as a "model citizen".
A similar description was applied in Britain to Mohammed Asha, a Saudi Arabian-born Palestinian with Jordanian citizenship alleged to be the ringleader of the failed bombers.
Asha, 26, who graduated top of his class from the Jordanian University's medical school, has lived in Britain since 2005 and was a neurosurgeon at the University Hospital of North Staffordshire in Stoke-on-Trent.
His wife Marwa, 27, a laboratory technician, has also been arrested.
Police also arrested an Iraqi junior doctor, Bilal Abdulla, and two Saudi doctors who worked together at Royal Alexandra Hospital, Paisley, Renfrewshire. An Indian doctor was arrested in Liverpool.
Another alleged accomplice, severely burned while ramming an explosives-laden Jeep Cherokee into Glasgow Airport's passenger terminal, is also reported to be a locum doctor at Royal Alexandra.
The arrests followed the failed bid to detonate by mobile phone two cars packed with explosives and parked near a London nightclub, and the later airport attempt.
British commentators have noted the botched nature of both attempts, including the type of explosives used, ineffective detonation systems in London, and the doomed attempt to ram a terminal protected by bollards.
But al Qaeda expert Jason Burke wrote in the Observer that the use of amateurs could indicate the toll taken of the terror group's professionals.
"There are scores if not hundreds of young men who have been radicalised by al Qaeda's propaganda," he wrote. "Al Qaeda had traded competence and discipline for resilience and dispersion."
Dr McKinley believes it more likely the would-be bombers were a copy-cat cell, as they used explosives that bore no resemblance to Iraqi car bombs. Instead of high explosives, they used propane gas with kerosene or petrol as a catalyst. Had the vehicles exploded, the result would have been a fireball, but no percussive effect.
"Clearly they didn't know what they were doing," he said.
Although security for forthcoming Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation forum meetings will be reviewed, Prime Minister John Howard said there was no reason to lift Australia's terror alert from its "medium" level.
