'Amazing to be free', kidnapped reporter says
Alan Johnston, the BBC journalist held hostage in Gaza, was freed and handed over to Palestinian officials today after a late-night deal with the al Qaeda-inspired group that kidnapped him in March.
The 45-year-old Briton was was embraced by BBC
colleagues after he arrived by car at the home of Hamas's local leader in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh.
He told BBC television live from Gaza it was "amazing to be free" and that he had often been frightened during four months in captivity.
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Indian consul speaks out on detention of doctor in Australia
A senior Indian diplomat says Australian authorities are not allowing him to assist a doctor arrested over a possible link to a UK terror plot.
Indian national Mohammed Haneef, who was arrested at Brisbane international airport on Monday night, is being questioned by federal police about a possible connection to bomb attacks in London and Glasgow.
Queensland-based Indian consul Professor Savra-Daman Singh said Dr Haneef had asked that his pregnant wife be contacted in India.
But Prof Singh said Australian authorities had refused to provide Dr Haneef's details.
"We do not know his address in India, we do not know his passport number, we do not know his date of birth, there are no details to go on," Prof Singh told ABC radio.
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Alleged terror cell drawn from medical world
As arrests over the bomb plots continued in Britain and Australia, intelligence specialists were expressing their amazement at the sheer audacity and ambition of the alleged plot.
The suspects form a disparate group of people of different nationality.
Medicine and the Muslim faith are the only common factors between them.
If the emerging hypothesis in the security community is correct, they were sent to the UK to blend into the community, and wait for the right time to attack.
The group were in a profession respected and dedicated to saving rather than taking lives; they were sent to a country whose health service is in dire need of help from medical staff from abroad; they settled in areas outside London well away from what are considered radical Muslim hotspots.
Experts in policing and security circles say they have never come across anything like it before.
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