Pakistan intelligence probes links with London bombers
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-07-15 09:52

Pakistan's intelligence services have launched a probe into possible links between the London bombers and extremist groups in the South Asian nation, security officials said.

"Britain has not so far conveyed specific information here from its ongoing investigation, but we are looking for possible links on our own," a top security official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

British police have confirmed the attacks that killed at least 52 people on London's transport network last week were the work of suicide bombers. Three of the blasts appear to have been perpetrated by British Muslims of Pakistani origin.

One of them, Shehzad Tanweer, 22, from Leeds, northern England, studied at a religious school in Pakistan for two months earlier this year, his family was reported as saying, while newspapers said another also travelled to Pakistan.

Pakistani officials, however, played down the role any such visits might have played, saying it was more likely the bombers had been cultivated by a terror organisation in Britain.

"While it is possible one or two of them may have been religiously motivated by elements in Pakistan, we have a strong feeling that they were recruited and trained inside Britain for the suicide acts," said the security official, based in the eastern city of Lahore.

Pakistan's Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao said Wednesday that Islamabad had provided London with information that helped it foil terrorist attacks in the run up to the May general elections.

He declined to say whether Britain had asked for information from Pakistan in relation to the London attacks.

The security official said Islamabad had also informed London last year when they obtained information about an active British Al-Qaeda cell that was headed by the alleged head of the network in Britain, Abu Eisa al-Hindi.

"On the basis of that information the British government was able to arrest around eight to 10 activists and then there was little or no exchange of information about their fate," he said.

"According to our information that group was planning Kamikaze attacks in Britain in and around Heathrow airport."

Pakistan's foreign ministry would not say if Islamabad had received any specific request from the British government to investigate the suspected bombers' ties to Pakistan.

"As far as Pakistan is concerned, we are cooperating with the British government on counter-terrorism efforts. Our cooperation is on a continuous basis," spokesman Jalil Abbas Jilani told AFP.

"We have intelligence sharing mechanism with more than 48 countries including the UK and Pakistan will fully cooperate with Britain and other countries in fighting this menace."

Clandestine militant groups in Britain have been broadening their support and also channeling funds secretly to sympathisers in Pakistan, according to Pakistani security analysts.

Experts point out that Hizbul Tehreer, a group espousing revival of a so-called caliphate based on early Islamic history, emerged in Britain more than a decade ago.

The group has been banned in many Muslim countries and the group was placed on the US terror watch list following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.