Indian police investigating 12 people linked with Britain bombers

Jul 8, 2007, 7:55 GMT

New Delhi - Police in India's southern city of Bangalore, home to three suspects in the failed car bomb attacks in London and Glasgow, have launched a hunt for 12 more people who could be part of the terrorist plot, a newspaper report said Sunday.

A team of the Bangalore police examined documents and database in the city's Jayanagar area from where they had earlier discovered driving licence details of Kafeel Ahmed, a 27-year old aeronautical engineer who drove a burning Jeep into the Glasgow airport, the Times of India reported.

The investigators were seeking details of 12 people and were searching the database late Saturday night, the report said.

The police team was interested in getting details of a man named Saleem Ahmed and were also investigating the possibility that fake Bangalore driving licences could have been used in the plot.

Kafeel Ahmed allegedly carried out the attack at Glasgow airport along with Iraqi doctor Bilal Abdullah and the two were also believed to have driven two Mercedes' 'bomb cars' to central London a day earlier. Those were discovered and defused.

While Kafeel is admitted at a Glasgow hospital with severe burn injuries, his younger brother Sabeel Ahmed and a cousin Mohammed Haneef, both doctors trained in the same medical school in Bangalore, are being questioned by police in Britain and Australia.

Eight people, most of them doctors, are being held in Britain and Australia in connection with the attempted attacks. The suspects are from countries in the Middle East as well as India.

According to a report in the Hindu newspaper, Kafeel Ahmed was researching bomb-making techniques weeks before he travelled to Britain on May 5.

Citing intelligence sources and records of Ahmed's internet activity, the Hindu reported that soon after reaching Britain, Ahmed acquired components used to assemble the explosives fitted in the cars that were intended to explode in central London.

The report said Ahmed acted without training or material assistance from terrorist networks and the police had found no link between Ahmed and major Muslim militant organizations.

Ahmed, who has a doctorate in aeronautical engineering, had studied at Queen's University in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and Anglia Polytechnic University in Cambridge.

He began his studies in Belfast in 2001 and remained in Northern Ireland until 2004. Police believe he returned to Bangalore in India in August, 2005.

His doctoral work was in the area of computational fluid dynamics, which involved study of the movement of fluids and gases over objects such as aircraft.