London – At least three physicians were identified Monday among suspects arrested in Britain’s failed car-bomb attacks, and authorities announced three new arrests – including a doctor in Australia – as the investigation spread overseas.
British media reports said an Indian doctor also was among the eight people in custody, and another outlet said at least five of the detainees in Britain were physicians.
British police confirmed a Palestinian doctor and an Iraqi physician were among those held, while Australian officials said a foreign doctor working there had been detained.
Officers used heightened stop-and-search powers and armed response vehicles to hunt for anyone else who might have been involved in the plot, and police put on a show of force to bolster security at airports and train stations and on city streets.
Australian authorities said the eighth suspect was arrested at the airport in Brisbane while trying to leave the country. Queens land state Premier Peter Beattie described the suspect as a 27-year-old man but withheld his identity.
Australian Attorney General Philip Ruddock said the suspect was a doctor at a hospital in Queensland state but was not a citizen.
British authorities said police searched at least 19 locations as part of the “fast-moving investigation,” which has come at a time of already high vigilance before the anniversary of the suicide bombings in London that killed 52 people July 7, 2005.
Two U.S. counterterrorism officials, who agreed to discuss the case on condition of anonymity, said the attackers in Britain were Islamic extremists sympathetic to al-Qaeda, but investigators were still trying to figure out whether there were any direct links.
One of the officials also said there continued to be concerns about possible plots to attack the United States, including the potential for a large-scale assault by al-Qaeda.
Among the factors contributing to the worry are al-Qaeda’s efforts to recruit in Pakistan’s tribal areas and its increased flow of public messages, the official said.
In the latest attacks, two car bombs failed to explode in central London on Friday and two men rammed a Jeep Cherokee loaded with gas cylinders into the entrance of Glasgow International Airport and then set it on fire Saturday.
The British government security official said investigators were working on one theory that the same people may have driven the explosives-laden cars into London and the blazing SUV in Glasgow.
The unidentified driver of the Jeep was being treated for serious burns at Royal Alexandra Hospital in Glasgow, where he was under arrest by armed police.
Police announced Monday that they arrested two men the previous day at residences at the hospital but would not say whether they were doctors. Britain’s Sky Television described them as trainee physicians, without citing a source for its report.
Four men and a woman were detained earlier.
Authorities identified Bilal Abdulla, an Iraqi doctor who worked at the Glasgow hospital, as the other man arrested at the airport and said he was being held at a high-security police station in Glasgow.
According to the British General Medical Council’s register, a man named Bilal Talal Abdul Samad Abdulla was registered in 2004 and trained in Baghdad. Staff at the Glasgow hospital said Abdulla was a diabetes specialist.
A man arrested late Saturday on a highway in central England, Mohammed Jamil Abdelqader Asha, was also a physician, police said. A Jordanian official said Asha was of Palestinian descent and carried a Jordanian passport.
Britain’s The Independent and The Muslim News newspapers reported that a man arrested in Liverpool late Saturday was a 26-year-old doctor from Bangalore, India, who worked at Halton Hospital in Cheshire. Police would not immediately comment on the reports.
The Muslim News also said the Indian doctor had used the car, cellphone and Internet account of a fellow physician who had moved from England to Australia around a year ago. It said police had asked friends of the Indian for details about the man who went to Australia.
“This case could be the final proof that an idea (that) those involved in these type of attacks are all young, angry and poorly educated is a mistake,” said Paul Cornish, a former British army officer and director of defense studies at London’s Chatham House think tank. “It’s wrong to suggest al-Qaeda are ignorant hill men. They are often middle- or upper-class and well-educated.”
