Investigators have got to ‘bottom’ of terror cell: Brown

By DPA

London : British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Friday he believed investigators had "got to the bottom of the cell" responsible for the attempted car bombings in London and Glasgow a week ago.


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But he also urged people to stay vigilant in view of the possible danger that would-be terrorists would use "crowded places for explosions."

Speaking on television, Brown said the three attempted car bombings in London and Glasgow a week ago were "designed to cause maximum carnage.

"I believe that, from what I know, we are getting to the bottom of this cell that has been responsible for what has happened," Brown told BBC television.

"I want people to know that the authorities have acted very quickly to deal with potential future incidents," said Brown.

People would have to face "a summer of intensified" security checks in the wake of the recent events.

"We have got to avoid the possibility – and it is very, very difficult – that people can use these crowded places for explosions," said Brown.

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

Investigators in Australia, where Indian doctor Mohammed Haneef, 27, is being held, Friday searched hospitals in connection with the botched attacks.

They said laptops and telephones were seized in Perth and Sydney as counter-terrorism police investigated a possible network of Muslim militants.

But Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty stressed that only one person was in custody and that no charges had been brought.

Indian police Friday questioned the families of three Indian suspects as the authorities in Bangalore said they had launched a full investigation into the terrorist plot.

Meanwhile in Glasgow, the health authorities said Friday that Kafeel Ahmed, said to have been the driver of the flaming Jeep rammed into the city's main airport terminal last Saturday, had been transferred to a specialist burns unit.

Ahmed, 27, who doused himself in petrol and set himself alight in the attack, was saved by an off-duty British police officer who hosed him down.

"It never entered my consciousness to walk away from the guy – I would have been failing in my duty to preserve life – and it doesn't matter whose life that is at the end of the day," the officer, Stewart Ferguson, has said.

Health officials in Glasgow said Ahmed, who is reported to have suffered 90 percent burns, had been transferred from the Alexandra Hospital in Paisley to a specialist unit at Glasgow Royal Infirmary.

The suspect, who has also been known as Khalid Ahmed, has been kept under armed guard and was described as still being in a critical condition.

It was initially thought that Ahmed was a medical doctor, like most of the suspects held.

But it emerged Friday that Ahmed had a doctorate in aeronautical engineering and had studied at Queen's University in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and Anglia Polytechnic University in Cambridge.

Ahmed, from Bangalore in India, began his studies in Belfast in 2001 and remained in Northern Ireland until 2004. It is thought he returned to Bangalore in August 2005.

He is believed to be the elder brother of Sabeel Ahmed, a medical doctor arrested by police in Liverpool, northern Britain.

The passenger in the Glasgow Jeep, Balil Abdulla, who worked at the Royal Alexandra Hospital, is among six suspects being held at London's top security Paddington Green station.

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