Detainee has ‘direct links’ to London bombings

PAKISTANI officials yesterday revealed they had arrested someone who, they claimed, was an “important man” with “direct links” to the London bombings.

A senior intelligence official in the eastern city of Lahore confirmed that the man was in custody, but refused to disclose his name, or elaborate on his alleged links to the July 7 attacks.

It was earlier reported that Haroon Rashid Aswad, a British Muslim who is believed to be wanted in connection with the bombings, had been arrested in Lahore.

Aswad is said to have been brought up in Dewsbury the same area of West Yorkshire where Mohammad Sidique Khan, one of the four London suicide bombers, had lived.

Reports quoted intelligence sources as saying that he had been arrested, however this was denied by Pakistani officials.

The Pakistani authorities have launched a crackdown on suspected militants in the wake of the July 7 attacks, reportedly arresting 200 in a series of raids.

They were earlier said to be holding at least seven people suspected of links to the four London suicide bombers three of whom visited Pakistan in the months before the atrocity.

Intelligence officials there are trying to determine whether they received training from extremist groups or became radicalised while attending religious schools, known as madrassas.

Investigators are trying to determine whether the British-born bombers three of whom were of Pakistani origin and travelled to Pakistan last year received training or other help from extremists in Pakistan.

Two intelligence officials in the capital, Islamabad, said yesterday that British authorities had asked their Pakistani counterparts to check about 100 Pakistani telephone numbers for possible links to the suicide bombers.

Authorities concluded that nearly 80 numbers did not provide information useful to the case.

The remaining 20 numbers were under investigation, an official said. Some were no longer in use, and authorities were trying to establish who had originally registered them.

Security officials believe one of the London bombers 22-year-old Shahzad Tanweer spent a few days at a religious school in Lahore.

Meanwhile, Afghan president Hamid Karzai warned that terrorism had flourished in Britain and elsewhere after the world turned a blind eye to it in his country.

Mr Karzai was addressing a meeting at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in central London before laying a floral tribute to an Afghan national who was killed in the London bombings.