Suspected suicide bomber caught in stun-gun raid

A SUSPECTED would-be suicide bomber was captured in a dramatic armed raid by British police and MI5 yesterday.

Another police raid was underway at an address in Stockwell, south London. There were no immediate reports of arrests.

DAC Peter Clarke, head of the Met’s Anti-Terrorist Branch, confirmed last night that the man arrested yesterday was Yasin Hassan Omar.

Omar, a 24-year-old Somalian, was felled with a Taser stun gun when officers stormed the safehouse where he was hiding in Birmingham.

Mr Clarke said police were still looking for the other three suspects wanted in connection with the attempted bombings of Thursday last week.

He released a new image of the man who is suspected of trying to detonate a device at Shepherd’s Bush Tube station. The image showed the man on a bus after he fled the scene.

Omar was held at high security Paddington Green police station in central London last night, where he will be questioned. He is the first of the July 21 would-be suicide squad suspects to be caught.

He was arrested at a house in Heybarnes Road, Birmingham at about 4.30am yesterday, which had been under surveillance before the raid. He was alone at the time, Mr Clarke said.

“During the course of that arrest, officers did find it necessary to use a Taser weapon to control him,” he added.

Mr Clarke said there was no intelligence to suggest there were explosives in the house. Local residents were evacuated “as a precaution”. The only other one of the three suspects to be identified so far is Muktar Said-Ibrahim, 27, who is suspected of trying to detonate a device on a double-decker bus in east London.

Mr Clarke said last night that detectives were still trying to confirm the identities of the other two suspects.

He said it was vital that anyone with information about them contact police immediately.

“I must emphasise that until these men are arrested they remain a threat,” he said.

Mr Clarke described Omar’s arrest as an “important development” in the investigation, but urged the public to remain “watchful and alert”.

“As I have said before, we need to find Muktar Said-Ibrahim, also known as Muktar Mohammed-Said who we believe was responsible for trying to set off a bomb on the number 26 bus in Hackney Road,” he said.

The first image of the suspected Shepherd’s Bush bomber released last week showed him at Westbourne Park Tube in a short-sleeved, dark blue England football shirt.

Mr Clarke said police now believed that he threw away the shirt after fleeing the scene. He said it may have been turned inside out and stained with mud.

It was probably left in McFarlane Road, near Wood Lane, he added.

The suspect was later seen wearing a white vest.