Two held over London attempted bombings
Two men were being questioned today by detectives investigating the failed July 21 bomb attacks following raids in south London.
Armed police made the arrests after they entered an address in Clapham and two homes in Stockwell last night.
The suspects were being held at a central London police station on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism, Scotland Yard said.
A total of 20 people are now being held by UK police in connection with the inquiry.
A neighbour said a man who was arrested at a downstairs flat in Crossford Street, Stockwell, was an Asian in his late twenties, who lived with his girlfriend and her two children.
Ahmet Tokmak, 41, said police arrived at the block of flats at about 5.30pm yesterday. He said: “I had just come in from work and had said hello to the man’s girlfriend.
“I came upstairs and my daughter started shouting that there were some people with guns outside.
“I went out because my six-year-old daughter was playing downstairs but the people started shouting at me to go inside.
“They were banging on the door downstairs and shouting and pushed the door down once it was opened.
“It was frightening.”
Police officers, some masked and others wearing forensic suits, went into the downstairs flat and brought the arrested man out about an hour later, he said.
Mr Tokmak described the man as “nice”, adding that he always played with the children in the area.
He said that the suspect had lived in the flats for one or two years and that his girlfriend had lived there for about five years.
Meanwhile, one of the July 21 suspected would-be suicide bombers was charged with terrorist offences in Italy yesterday.
Hussain Osman, also known as Hamdi Isaac, was charged with “association with the aim of international terrorism” and possessing false documents, his lawyer Antonietta Sonnessa said.
The Italian charging process is not the same as in the UK and it was immediately unclear whether the move would lead to further legal tussles and delays to British attempts to extradite him.
Two prosecutors, Franco Ionta and Pietro Saviotti, visited the Regina Coeli prison in Rome where he was held and said they were accusing Osman of international terrorism under Italian law.
Ms Sonnessa, an Italian court-appointed lawyer, was known to want her client to face trial in Italy rather than Britain.
But earlier, a police chief said he was confident the suspect would be sent back to the UK quickly.
Carlo De Stefano, head of Italy’s anti-terrorism police, said: “I believe that it won’t take long.”
British authorities were trying to get him back under a European Arrest Warrant.
Mr De Stefano also revealed how Osman was tracked across Europe by hi-tech surveillance technology which was used to eavesdrop on his mobile phone conversations.
Police and intelligence agencies listened as he desperately tried to find a way out of the net that was closing in around him.
As investigators tuned in on Friday morning, hours before his arrest, Osman spoke in an obscure Ethiopian dialect used on the border of Somalia and Eritrea, which encouraged them they had the right man.
While on the run he also made a call to Saudi Arabia and detectives are investigating whether he had links to al Qaida suspects in the Kingdom.
Technological efforts to track Osman across the continent began soon after he slipped out of Britain on a Eurostar from Waterloo on July 26 – despite being one of four suspects in the country’s biggest ever manhunt.
British police had identified a mobile phone he was using, which had made calls to Italy, and passed it on to the the Italian authorities.
Osman was tracked through France to Italy but dumped his British SIM card and replaced it with an Italian one. Italian police honed in on that the day before his arrest.
On the day of the arrest last Friday they recorded conversations in which he used the Ethiopian dialect.
Recordings were sent to London where anti-terrorist police were able to confirm that it was Osman and he was arrested at his brother’s house in the Rome suburb of Tor Pignatarra.
Italian police were also able to confirm his identity by a wound to his right leg sustained during his alleged botched suicide mission.
Osman, who has reportedly been co-operating with interrogators, told them his real name was Hamdi Isaac and he was Ethiopian. He had claimed to be Hussain Osman from war-torn Somalia so that he could stay in Britain when he arrived in 1996.
Mr De Stefano said that the investigation so far indicated that he was allegedly part of an ad hoc, loosely knit terrorist group.
In London, police were still on high alert amid fears that a third terrorist cell could be plotting another strike on the capital following the July 7 and attempted July 21 attacks.
Thousands of officers were on the streets guarding Tube and overland rail stations.
British Transport Police have been targeting specific ethnic groups for “intelligence-led” stop-and-searches as part of their heightened security measures.
The July 7 and July 21 inquiries have now seen police examining more than 8,500 documents and 35,000 CCTV tapes.
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