LONDON, 28 July 2005 — In a dramatic breakthrough yesterday, Scotland Yard confirmed they have arrested 24-year-old Yasin Hassan Omar, one of the four failed bombers who tried to detonate a bomb in Warren Street tube station last Thursday.
Police yesterday also arrested six more people in the hunt for the London bombers, and continued to question another five people arrested over the last few days. Other raids were also in progress at North London premises, in East Finchley and New Southgate.
In a dawn raid yesterday, armed officers from the anti-terrorist branch supported by colleagues from the bomb disposal unit of the Royal Logistic Corps, swooped on two addresses in Birmingham in the West Midlands.
At a house in the Hay Mills area, police had to use a “Taser” stun gun to disable one of four prime suspects in the second wave of London bombings on July 21. Yasin Hassan Omar, a Somali-born asylum seeker, was thought to have explosives strapped to his body.
According to police, he had a rucksack on his back at the time of the arrest. As soon as he was stunned, the police threw the rucksack out of a window in case it was primed to detonate.
Police cleared over 100 homes in the area as a precautionary measure, as bomb disposal and forensic experts converged to conduct a crime scene investigation.
A few streets away in the Washwood Heath area, police broke down the front door of a house and arrested three men of “Somali descent”. Neighbors stressed that the young men, who had lived at the rented house for about six months, “kept to themselves and hardly mixed with anyone.” Police also briefly detained the Pakistani landlord and his brother, to eliminate them from their inquiries.
Later in the day, Tyneside police arrested two men under the Anti-Terrorism Act as they boarded a train at Grantham. The train was on its way from Newcastle to King’s Cross station in London, the scene of the devastating first wave of attacks on July 7 in which some 56 people died.
Both areas are “ethnically mixed”. Muslim community leaders yet again found themselves on the defensive, stressing that the area was a peaceful one in which the various ethnic groups lived harmoniously, and expressing “regret that this has come to Birmingham in our own backyard”.
Police arrested a seventh man under the Anti-Terrorism Act at Luton Airport on a Ryanair plane bound for France. All those arrested are linked to the two parallel investigations into the two waves of London bombings in July.
The fact that four major metropolitan areas including London, Luton, Leeds and Birmingham have been involved in the London bomb investigations is of some concern to the police. It suggests a potentially wide network of cells and “safe houses”, albeit small, making it difficult to predict how many potential suicide bombers are still on the loose and how much explosives components are still stashed away.
Omar, who is key to the 21/7 investigation, was taken to the high security Paddington Green police station in Edgware Road, London. The other three arrested in Birmingham were taken to an undisclosed police station in the West Midlands for questioning, suggesting perhaps that they are more peripheral to the investigation, such as providing a “safe house” hiding place for the fugitive and other logistical support.
Police stress that had the 21/7 bombings been successful, the damage and loss of life would have equaled that of the 7/7 attacks. As such, they are treating the second wave of failed attacks with the same investigative vigor as the 7/7 suicide bombings.
Meanwhile, the body of 27-year-old Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazialian electrician who was shot seven times in the head on a Northern Line tube train at Stockwell station last Friday by plainclothes anti-terrorist police, was flown to his native Sao Paolo for burial last night.
An investigation into the tragedy has already been started by the Independent Police Complaints Commission.
Close relatives flew to London to accompany the body home. In a press conference, an emotional cousin of de Menezes urged the British people to “open up their minds. For a long time (Prime Minister) Blair has been killing people far from here. Now he is starting to kill people here in this country.”
Gareth Peirce, the British solicitor representing the de Menezes family, said that a man had died who committed no crime. “There has been a public discussion as to whether those who killed de Menezes themselves have committed a crime or not,” stressed Peirce.
“There has been a public discussion as to the justification of what had happened. So many people in high places have rushed to this justification. This is a regrettable judgement, without the scrutiny of the facts and of the policy. There are a 100 questions to be asked about the facts surrounding the shooting, and there are 1001 questions to be asked about the policies that led to the shooting,” she added.
The solicitor attacked Scotland Yard’s ‘shoot to kill policy’, which she said has in the past been the subject of a public inquiry for its use in Northern Ireland, and which is now being used as if “it is a term of law” with the approval of the police and the politicians.
