Evil Muslim Cleric Says al-Qaida Warned of UK Attacks

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2007/7/4/103524.shtml?s=lh

Cleric Says al-Qaida Warned of UK Attacks

NewsMax.com Wires Wednesday, July 4, 2007

LONDON -- Months before failed bombings in Britain that were linked to

several foreign doctors, a British cleric says an al-Qaida chief made a

cryptic warning to him: "Those who cure you will kill you."

Canon Andrew White, a senior British cleric working in Baghdad, said

Wednesday that he met with the al-Qaida leader and Sunni Muslim tribal and

religious leaders in the Jordanian capital of Amman on April 18.

He said the alleged al-Qaida chief who traveled from Syria warned of several

British attacks during the meeting.

"It was so awful that in my update for the day I wrote that I have met with

the devil today," White told British Broadcasting Corp. radio. "At one

moment in the meeting he said, 'Those who cure you are going to kill you."'

White, who runs Baghdad's only Anglican parish and has been involved in

several hostage negotiations in Iraq, said he didn't understand the threat's

significance at the time. Although he said he passed the general threat

warning on to Britain's Foreign Office, White said he did not mention the

comment hinting at the involvement of doctors.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown, meanwhile, announced a crackdown on immigrants

taking skilled jobs such as doctors.

Recruitment practices of health service staff will be reviewed and

background checks will be expanded, he said.

As the new information surfaced, more details dripped out about the eight

suspects arrested after the failed car bombing attacks last week. Several of

the men were reportedly on an MI5 watch list, according to British media.

One of the men on the list had posted a comment on an Internet chatroom

condemning Danish cartoons portraying the prophet Mohammed in a derogotory

way, The Evening Standard reported, using unidentified intelligence sources.

It was unclear why the other suspects may have been put on the watch list.

One of the suspects, Iraqi doctor Bilal Abdulla, reportedly had links to

radical Islamic groups, and several others were linked to extremist radicals

listed on MI5s database, The Times of London reported.

Shiraz Maher, a former member of a radical Islamic group, said he knew

Abdulla at Cambridge University.

"He was certainly very angry about what was happening in Iraq. ... He

supported the insurgency in Iraq. He actively cheered the deaths of British

and American troops in Iraq," he told BBC television's "Newsnight."

He said Abdulla berated a Muslim roommate for not being devout enough,

showing him a beheading video and warning this could happen to him. He also

said he had a number of videos of al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab

al-Zarqawi, who was killed by a U.S. airstrike last year.

Abdulla had been disciplined at the at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in

Paisley outside Glasgow for spending too much time on the Internet,

according to the Evening Standard, suggesting the men may have planned the

attacks in cyberspace.

Police had seized several computers from hospitals in Glasgow, Stoke-on-Kent

and Liverpool.

While information held on a British security service database did not alert

authorities to the attacks, it did help police to round up suspects quickly,

British media reported, quoting several unidentified government sources.

A senior U.S. counterterrorism official, who spoke on condition of anonymity

because of the sensitivity of the issue, said none of the eight suspects was

on any American lists of potential terror suspects.

The eight people held include one doctor from Iraq and two from India.

Others include a physician from Lebanon and a Jordanian doctor and his

medical assistant wife. Another doctor and a medical student are thought to

be from the Middle East, possibly Saudi Arabia.

All employees of the National Health Service, some worked as colleagues at

hospitals in England and Scotland. Experts and officials say the evidence

points to the plot being hatched after they met in Britain, rather than

overseas.

No one has yet been charged in the plot in which two car bombs failed to

explode in central London Friday and two men rammed a Jeep Cherokee loaded

with gas cylinders into the entrance of Glasgow International Airport and

set it on fire the following day.

The family of one suspect - Muhammad Haneef, a 27-year-old doctor from India

arrested late Monday in Brisbane, Australia - professed his innocence. He

had worked at Liverpool before.

"He has been detained unnecessarily. He is innocent," Qurat-ul-ain, Haneef's

mother, told The Associated Press in the southern Indian city of Bangalore.

Sumaiya, Haneef's sister, said Wednesday he was coming to Bangalore to see

his daughter, who was born a week ago. Sumaiya uses one name.

Another suspect arrested in Liverpool was widely named in the British media

as Sabeel Ahmed, but police refused to confirm his identity. He is believed

to be a 26-year-old doctor.

Investigators believe the main plotters have been rounded up, though others

involved on the periphery, including at least one British-born suspect, were

still being hunted, a British government security official said, speaking on

condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the details.

British-born Muslims who were behind the 2005 London transit suicide

bombings and others in thwarted plots here have been linked to terror

training camps and foreign radicals in Pakistan.

The education of the suspects in the car bomb attempts is in sharp contrast

to the men who killed 52 bus and subway passengers in the London transit

bombings. The ringleader of that attack, Mohammed Siddique Khan, had a

degree in business studies, but with low marks, and his three fellow suicide

bombers had little or no higher education.

Haneef worked in 2005 at Halton Hospital near Liverpool in northern England,

hospital spokesman Mark Shone said.

Investigators believe the same men who parked the explosives-laden cars in

London may have also driven the SUV in Glasgow, the British security

official said.