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All four july 21 suspects held in london and rome { July 29 2005 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://nytimes.com/2005/07/29/international/europe/29cnd-london.htmlhttp://nytimes.com/2005/07/29/international/europe/29cnd-london.html
July 29, 2005
Britain Arrests 3 Suspects; Another Is Held in Rome
By ALAN COWELL
LONDON, July 29 - The police in London and Rome swooped down on four suspected terrorists today in an attempt to round up attackers who tried and failed to bomb subway trains and a bus in London on July 21.
In London, police officers in body armor, some wearing gas masks and dark ski masks and some toting automatic rifles, stormed two apartment houses in west London arrested three men.
Shortly afterward, the Italian interior minister in Rome said Italian police had arrested a Somali-born man with British citizenship, identified by the Italians as Osman Hussain. A statement from the minister, Giuseppe Pisanu, said the man was "the fourth attacker of July 21 in London," suggesting that all four known suspects from the failed attacks, identified in closed- circuit television images, had been seized. But the British police did not confirm that explicitly.
It was still unclear, too, today whether there had been a fifth would-be bomber on July 21, as was suggested by investigators after the discovery of an abandoned fifth package of explosives.
Peter Clarke, the head of London's anti-terrorism police, said that one unidentified man, detained in Tavistock Crescent, west London, would be questioned in relation to the July 21 attempts. Mr Clarke did not refer to him specifically as a fifth bomber.
At a housing project called the Peabody Buildings, two more men had been detained, Mr. Clarke said. One of them was Ibrahim Muktar Said, apparently the same man as had been sought, under the name Muktar Said Ibrahim, for the failed bombing of a bus in east London.
The second man arrested there was identified as Ramzi Mohamed, Mr. Clarke said. The name had not previously been made public. Mr. Clarke also confirmed that Italian police had arrested a man. but he gave the name as Hussain Osman.
Two days ago, another suspect, Yasin Hassan Omar, was detained in Birmingham, bringing the total number of men detained directly in connected with the failed bombings to five.
"The investigation has moved with some speed but it is continuing," Mr. Clarke said. "There will be more very visible police activity." And he indicated that he did not believe the terror cells had been wound up.
"We must not be complacent," he said. "The threat remains and is very real."
The earlier statement from Rome was the first indication that a suspect had gotten as far as Italy. One unconfirmed report after the failed July 21 bombings said one would-be bomber had fled to Belgium or the Netherlands. Another said the man had left England in the past two or three days and had been tracked through Paris and Milan by cellphone calls to a brother-in-law resident in Rome.
But the announcement from Rome seemed certain to raise questions about how a failed bomber had managed to slip out of Britain undetected, particularly since images showing all four suspects on closed-circuit television were made public just a day after the July 21 attacks.
In London today, daylight raids on streets in Kensal Green and Westbourne Park injected what has become familiar imagery in this city under siege since the first terror attack on July 7 - streets cordoned and residents fleeing homes as the police ring unremarkable homes and apartments in quiet streets. People fled in underwear and dressing-gowns, clutching children, shoes and clothes, chased from their homes at late morning.
A separate police statement today said two women, not identified by name, were arrested under anti-terrorism laws at Liverpool Street mainline station. The area around the station was sealed off after one of the women tried to run after refusing a police order to open a bag, witnesses said.
In west London, explosions, possibly from stun grenades, boomed across leafy streets as police moved in, and at least one suspect was seen on television being led away handcuffed and clad in a white head-to-toe coverall to prevent the loss of forensic evidence.
Police snipers using rifles with telescopic sights took up position overlooking the apartments where the arrests happened. The raids were arranged at short notice, probably after informants responded to increasingly desperate police appeals for information leading them to the suspects.
Television showed police ordering one man, whom they addressed only as Mohammed, to undress and surrender.
"You must do as we say," police were heard shouting at one of the suspect. Mr. Clarke, the anti-terror police officer, told reporters that the two men had refused to surrender so "specialist tactics were used."
Paul Carroll, 35, a painter and decorator, said he had a clear view of the front door of one apartment raided by police. "The police taped it up with something like masking tape and blew it off. They fired in teargas, just shot it in with a rifle running past the windows. Then I just heard one of the police shout, Mohammed, come out with your hands up," Mr. Carroll said.
"About 45 minutes after they blew off the door the police brought out two Somalian-looking men, one in the early 20's, short hair, clean-shaven; one about 40, stubble," he said, speaking to a reporter over a cellphone as the events unfolded.
Television showed two men, apparently naked, on an apartment balcony surrendering to armed police. At a crucial moment in the arrest, two small girls wandered out of a neighboring apartment, curious about a police dog, and were shooed away by an armed police officer.
The brief siege recalled events in Spain last year when the police closed in on attackers who bombed commuter trains in March 2004, killing 191 people. The suspects blew themselves up in an apartment house. But there was no immediate indication that explosives had been found at either of the apartments.
Two days ago, police in Birmingham arrested Yasin Hassan Omar, a 24-year-old Somali, seen on closed-circuit television images fleeing the scene of one failed attack at Warren Street station in central London.
The failed attacks came just two weeks after bombings on July 7 claimed 56 lives, included those of four suspected bombers.
Mr. Ibrahim had been named earlier as one of the four suspects. A naturalized British citizen born in Eritrea, he is accused of trying to bomb a number 26 bus in east London. Mr Ibrahim, 27, arrived in Britain with his family when he was only 11 years old and settled on a housing estate in northwest London.
Mr. Omar and Mr. Ibrahim shared a small apartment in a housing project in north London, called Curtis House, which police raided after the failed bombings.
Sir Ian Blair, the head of the London police, has said the attackers on that day all made one single mistake which prevented their explosives from detonating with the same bloody results as the July 7 attacks.
The area in London where the arrests took place today is close to a park where the police found abandoned explosives after the July 21 attacks.
The arrests today followed a series of police raids in several parts of London including housing projects in south London looking for the family and associates of one of the bombers.
But the hunt also claimed a further victim, a 27-year-old Brazilian electrician, Jean Charles de Menezes, shot dead last Friday by police who say they mistook him for a suicide bomber.
Nina Wilson, an 18-year-old supermarket worker who lives nearby, said one of the apartments raided by police was inhabited by "two, maybe three, Somalian-looking men in their early-30s living there."
"Every time I saw them they were in their blue bus driver clothes. They were very friendly," she said.
David Clouden, a 40-year-old bus-driver, also saw police leading "a black guy, a young guy, Somalian. I recognise him from being round here. He works down at the local bus station - Westbourne Park bus station. The guy was wearing a London Transport uniform - blue jacket with yellow fluorescent vest over the top." Other witnesses said the driver may have been leading the police to the suspects' apartment.
Reporting for this article was contributed by Jonathan Allen and Souad Mekhennet from London and by Elisabetta Povoledo of The International Herald Tribune from Rome.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
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