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07/21/2005:

""Mastermind" arrested?"

British Seeking Cleric's Top Aide in Connection With July 7 Attack
LONDON, July 20 - The police investigating the terrorist bombings here have begun a worldwide hunt for a former aide to one of Britain's most militant Islamic clerics who they believe may have played a key role in the July 7 attacks, according to British, European and American intelligence and law enforcement officials.

The man, identified as Haroon Rashid Aswat, 31, originally from Dewsbury in north-central England, was a senior aide to Abu Hamza al-Masri, the blind, one-armed militant cleric who preached at the Finsbury Park mosque in north London until his arrest in April 2004. Mr. Masri, who urged young men to wage jihad in Afghanistan, Iraq and beyond, is now facing extradition to the United States to face terrorism-related charges.

Several intelligence and law enforcement officials said they believed that Mr. Aswat was also involved in a plan to set up a training camp for Al Qaeda in Oregon six years ago.

A theory now being pursued by Scotland Yard is that Mr. Aswat provided the four British bombers with support for the coordinated attacks in London's public transportation system, killing 56 people and wounding 700, several senior intelligence and law enforcement officials said Wednesday night.

Those officials declined to say what specifically made them believe that Mr. Aswat was linked to the bombers, all of whom died in the attacks.

One official noted that Mr. Aswat was raised in Dewsbury, the same area where Mohammad Sidique Khan, 30, one of the four bombers, lived. On Wednesday, Mr. Aswat's family said he had not lived at the family's home near Dewsbury for 10 years.

Mr. Aswat's whereabouts are unknown, but several senior investigators said they were almost certain that he was not in Britain now.

Officials say he is of Pakistani descent, like three of the four bombers, but his family's neighbors said the family was from Gujarat, India.

"Nobody's tying him in or making him the mastermind yet," a senior American official said. "There's no real substantiation yet. But people are looking at some of his confederates and connections, and saying that it's a possibility."

An American official and two European officials said Mr. Aswat spent several weeks in Bly, Ore., in late 1999 and early 2000, trying to help several associates establish a Qaeda training camp there. Although he was not identified by name in court papers in the Oregon case, several American officials said he was an unindicted co-conspirator in the indictment of James Ujaama, who pleaded guilty to aiding the Taliban. Mr. Ujaama, 39, is now the leading witness in the United States terrorism indictment of Mr. Masri, American officials said.

Two American officials cautioned it was not fully confirmed that the Mr. Aswat being sought was the same man implicated in the Oregon case.

Mr. Aswat is believed to have met Osama bin Laden sometime in the late 1990's, senior investigators said. He trained at Qaeda-run camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan, they said.

In recent days, Mr. Aswat has emerged as a suspect of intense interest to investigators searching for a principal plotter behind the London bombings, according to interviews with 10 officials. Scotland Yard says it believes that the four British bombers had logistical, financial and technical support from several accomplices, and Mr. Aswat had the ability to provide that kind of leadership, two senior American officials and two European officials said.

The hunt for Mr. Aswat was especially evident this week in Pakistan, where a senior government official said two men with names similar to Mr. Aswat's were arrested and released when neither proved to be the man they were looking for.

Another Pakistani intelligence official said Mr. Aswat had been under criminal investigation in Britain since 1999, but British officials declined to comment on that. The Metropolitan Police have said previously that a man on Britain's security "watch list" entered England by ferry two weeks before the July 7 bombing attacks and then left either the morning of the bombings, or the night before from Heathrow Airport, officials have said. Officials declined to say Wednesday whether Mr. Aswat was that man.

Several senior European and American officials said it was reported that Mr. Aswat died during an American bombing raid in Afghanistan in late 2001, but investigators now say that he is still alive.
It's worth resurrecting him from the dead for this. How is it he was allowed into England a few weeks ago? Clearly, there are advantages to being dead.

Pakistan questions Briton on 'key role' in bombings
Security officials in Pakistan were yesterday questioning a British man arrested on suspicion of playing a key role in the 7/7 bombings in which 56 people died.

Haroon Rashid Aswat was carrying a belt packed with explosives, a British passport and a substantial amount of cash when he was seized, according to intelligence sources in the country.

His name is understood to have been passed to Pakistan's security agency, Inter Services Intelligence, by British authorities after it emerged after an examination of the mobile phones used by the four bombers.

The arrested man is thought to have been born in Dewsbury and grown up in Batley, West Yorkshire, a short distance from the three suicide bombers who were from Leeds, and the fourth, who grew up in Huddersfield. Counter-terrorism officials in the UK said they believed the detainee and a 30-year-old from Yorkshire, who has the same name, are probably the same person.

The Briton being questioned in Pakistan was also hunted by the FBI for several years after he allegedly travelled from London to Oregon in November 1999 in an attempt to establish an al-Qaida training camp. That search was scaled down, however, after the agency heard that he had been killed while fighting for the Taliban in Afghanistan.

It was unclear whether Aswat was also the name used by the so-called "fifth man", a known al-Qaida suspect who was reported to have slipped into the UK through an east coast seaport several weeks before the attacks, but who was not placed under surveillance and flew out on July 6.

UK counter-terrorism officials said they were "interested" in the British detainee, but added that there was no firm evidence to link him to the blasts on three tube trains and a bus two weeks ago.

Mr Aswat was being held for questioning in Islamabad last night after being flown by helicopter from the small town of Sargodha, 110 miles west of Lahore, where he was arrested four days ago. He is expected to also be questioned by British intelligence officials based in the city.

A second Briton, Zeeshan Siddiqui, 24, from Hounslow, west London, is also being questioned in Pakistan about an alleged plot to bomb targets in the UK. Mr Siddiqui, who was arrested in Peshawar on May 18, was a close schoolfriend of Asif Hanif, also from Hounslow, who killed himself and three other people in a suicide bomb attack on a bar in Tel Aviv in April 2003.

Police had rounded up about 200 men in raids on mosques and madrasas within 24 hours of Tony Blair saying he was anxious to see Pakistan crack down on militant teaching in religious schools.

Some were being questioned about possible links with the three suicide bombers from Leeds - Mohammad Sidique Khan, 30, Shehzad Tanweer, 22, and Hasib Hussain, 18 - whose families originated in Pakistan, and who are known to have travelled there late last year.

Several security sources in the country, who did not wish to be named, said Mr Aswat had been arrested when police first began rounding up suspected militants. "We have arrested Haroon Rashid in Sargodha three days ago," said one security official.

Pakistan's interior minister, Aftab Khan Sherpao, and information minister, Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, yesterday denied the arrest. Intelligence sources insisted, however, that Mr Aswat had been detained. One source close to the investigation told the Guardian that he had links with Jaish-i-Muhammad, one of four major Islamist groups active in the country. Other sources say that he is linked to al-Qaida.

As well as the belt packed with explosives and the British passport, Mr Aswat was said by one of the security officials to be in possession of around 1m rupees (£9,650).

The name Haroon Rashid Aswat came to the attention of security services around the world after a man by that name allegedly attempted to establish an al-Qaida training camp in Oregon almost six years ago.

According to documents lodged with a federal court in New York, he was one of two men who travelled from London to assist a local man, James Ujaama, in setting up a "jihad training camp" near the town of Bly. After his arrest, Ujaama, 39, a convert to Islam previously known as James Ernest Thompson, cooperated with the FBI and was jailed for two years after he admitted providing aid to the Taliban.

The FBI is understood to have believed Mr Aswat was killed while fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan, but has continued searching for Oussama Kassir, a resident of Sweden, who is said to have been the second man who travelled from London.

Briton Named as Bomb Planner; Met With Bin Laden
Wed Jul 20 2005 20:20:53 ET

Terror investigators hunting the London bombing mastermind are to question a suspected Al Qaeda planner held in Pakistan.

British-born Haroon Rashid Aswad was seized at a religious school with a suicide bomb belt, explosives and GBP 13,000 in cash.

Security sources in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, claim he had up to 20 telephone conversations with London bombers Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer. One of these is believed to have been just hours before the blasts.

The UK's DAILY MAIL reports on Thursday: Security sources say he trained at an Afghan camp which was visited by Osama Bin Laden and that he is linked to two of Bin Laden's planners and an Al Qaeda suspect held in America.

U.S. investigators have been told that Aswad attended the Khalden camp in Afghanistan, favoured by foreign terror trainees. British shoe bomber Richard Reid is among those who attended the camp and it has been reported that London bomber Khan also went there.

Wow this guy has all the stuff: US connections, Osama, Richard Reid, religious school, AND a 'suicide belt. Dead too.