Unusual duo at center of British case

LONDON — Authorities charged an Iraqi doctor Friday in last week’s attempted car bombings and identified the driver of a vehicle that rammed into Glasgow Airport as an engineer from India, placing the two at the hub of an unusual mix of suspects of Middle Eastern and South Asian origin.

Prosecutors filed charges of conspiracy to cause explosions against Bilal Abdullah, 27, who worked at a Glasgow-area hospital during the last year. Abdullah became the first of eight suspects in custody, at least six of them foreign doctors or medical workers, to be charged in a case that investigators regard as the latest in a string of Al Qaeda-connected plots against Britain.

The FBI confirmed that two of the doctors had also looked into working in the United States during the last year. Their efforts did not get far, but British officials say some of the suspects were already Islamic radicals by then, and they could have been exploring the idea of an attack on U.S. soil.

Questions persist about the identities of some of the suspects and whether they have ties to trainers or masterminds outside Britain. But it seems increasingly likely that the friendship between Abdullah and the engineer -- now identified as Kafeel Ahmed -- linked groups of suspects from the Middle East and India and was a central force driving the alleged plot.

Although Islamic extremist networks are often multi-ethnic, that particular mix is unusual in Britain. Extremist cells in previous cases were generally dominated by militants of North African, Pakistani or African origin, with ideologues more likely to be Middle Eastern, counter-terrorism officials said.

Cambridge ties

Abdullah and Ahmed, who allegedly crashed a Jeep Cherokee into the departures terminal at Glasgow International Airport a week ago, grew close at Cambridge. A man who knew them at the time remembers the stocky Indian engineer zooming around the university city on a big motorcycle, with the Iraqi doctor on the back.

“Kafeel was a bit of an adrenaline junkie,” said Shiraz Maher, a former fundamentalist who was studying at Cambridge University at the time. “But Bilal was the stronger of the two, and had a lot of influence on Kafeel. I think Kafeel became more devout under Bilal’s influence.”

On June 29, police believe, the two tried to blow up a pair of explosives-packed cars left in a crowded nightclub district near London’s iconic Trafalgar Square, but failed. They allegedly hurried back to Glasgow as police closed in, loaded a Jeep with propane canisters and gasoline and, with Ahmed at the wheel, attacked the airport.

Ahmed set himself on fire during a struggle with police, suffering severe burns that have left him near death, authorities said. Doctors transferred him Friday to a special burn unit in Glasgow.

Before the botched London attack, one of the two suspects left a suicide note, according to a British security official who asked to remain anonymous because of restrictions on talking to the media.

Police had not officially confirmed the names of any of the suspects before charging Abdullah on Friday. Ahmed had been initially described in media reports and by authorities as a Middle Eastern doctor whose first name was Khalid.

In recent days, though, officials said Ahmed is an engineer from India and is apparently related to two Indian doctors also in custody. He may also have Jordanian citizenship and is one of several suspects thought to have used multiple or fraudulent identities, officials said.

“One of the arts these people practice is to conceal their identities,” said the British security official. “Some of them have not been interviewed because the investigators want to be sure exactly who they dealing with before they sit down with them.”

A British man who had business dealings with Abdullah in Glasgow said the Iraqi provided a British passport issued by the consulate in Jordan. That reinforces reports that Abdullah was born in Britain while his father, also a doctor, was working here. Abdullah has an uncle and cousin in Cambridge.

Maher described Abdullah in an interview this week as an angry extremist influenced by the ideology of Abu Musab Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq who was killed by U.S. forces last year.

In a second interview Friday, Maher said he also knew Ahmed. They all frequented the Islamic Academy, a student residence and prayer hall in a red-brick house owned by a Muslim charity, during the 2004-2005 academic year, Maher said.

Ahmed is thought to be 27. He is from a well-off family of doctors from Bangalore, Maher said. Ahmed lived in a small bedroom in the house and had an office at Anglia Polytechnic University, where he was pursuing a doctorate in engineering, Maher said.

Ahmed was short and chunky, Maher recalled. He described his shock at the video images from the Glasgow airport of police subduing a shirtless Ahmed, who was covered with burns and soot.

“You feel a kind of mix of emotions,” Maher said. “There’s a bit of sympathy because I knew this guy. But you also want to grab him, confront him, say, ‘What did you think you were doing?’ ”

Failed recruiting

Maher belonged to Hizb ut-Tahrir, a nominally nonviolent but aggressive group that seeks to impose an Islamic caliphate. The cerebral, soft-spoken 25-year-old, who has degrees in law and history, renounced the group in late 2005 and has become a writer and commentator.

Hizb ut-Tahrir militants, one of them Ahmed’s roommate, tried to recruit both men but failed, Maher said.

“My cell leader said that if the two of them hadn’t been so close, Kafeel would have joined us,” he recalled.

Ahmed tried to help Abdullah get a medical position in Britain by asking his brother, a physician, to write a letter fraudulently claiming that Abdullah had practiced at a hospital in Bangalore, Maher said.

Maher believes the brother was Sabeel Ahmed, who worked at a hospital near Liverpool until his arrest Monday. Indian newspapers reported Friday that both brothers had Jordanian passports because their family lived in Jordan when they were children.

The Indian and British media also reported that Kafeel Ahmed had called his family in Bangalore on the day of the airport attack and talked to them about a mysterious project.

Ahmed and Abdullah went on a winter camping trip to the Lake District in northern England with half a dozen fundamentalists in 2005, Maher said. Investigators say the terrorist cells that bombed the London transport system in July 2005 used excursions in the same region to radicalize their members and plan attacks.

“I remember seeing photos of them all bundled up and Abdullah laughing about it, saying it was too cold for him,” Maher said.

The two men had contact in Cambridge with a Jordanian doctor who Maher believes may have been Mohammed Jamil Asha, another suspect in the case who was arrested early Sunday with his wife.

Seeking U.S. work

The FBI confirmed Friday that Asha and another suspect had contacted a Philadelphia-based clearinghouse for foreign doctors about working in the United States. The FBI did not identify the second suspect.

The two doctors contacted the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates within the last year, exploring the possibility of working as medical residents, according to a federal law enforcement official.

They took only initial steps to apply for entry into U.S.-based graduate medical-education programs, which requires several tests, the official said. Their U.S. contacts were first reported Friday on the Philadelphia Inquirer’s website.

This week, FBI agents searched the offices of the educational commission, which certifies foreign-trained doctors to work as U.S. medical residents. But there are no indications that any of the alleged plotters came into the country or had contacts with any U.S.-based extremists, the official said.

Maher has been trying to imagine the odyssey that took his former friends across the line to violence. He believes Abdullah was a likely leader of the plot because of his fervor, his strong personality, and his reverence for militant ideologues in Iraq. He thinks Ahmed could have been recruited for his engineering knowledge.

“I think Bilal could have groomed him,” Maher said. “Bilal never missed morning prayers, but Kafeel missed them now and then. How do you get from that to a suicide bomber?

“I can imagine him and Bilal at the airport, thinking the car is about to explode, all the adrenaline buzz. Then they hit and bang, they are not dead after all. And they are still looking at the Glasgow airport in the shock of knowing they are going to be caught.”

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Times staff writers Janet Stobart in London, Josh Meyer in Washington and Henry Chu in New Delhi contributed to this report.