Intelligence agencies checking bomber’s phone list
ISLAMABAD, July 17: British authorities have given Pakistan a list of telephones calls made from the house of one of bombers in the attacks on London, intelligence officials said on Sunday.
Three of the four bombers are young British Muslims of Pakistani descent and have been identified as Shehzad Tanweer, Mohammad Sidique Khan and Hasib Hussain. The fourth is Jamiacan-born Briton.
An intelligence official investigating connections with the bombings said they were checking the numbers mentioned in the list of telephones made from Tanweer’s home in Britain but it had not yielded any results so far.
“We have quizzed three people whose numbers were found in the list but we have concluded that they have nothing to do with Tanweer,” he told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
Investigators had earlier confirmed Tanweer, 22, had visited the cities of Faisalabad and Lahore during two trips to Pakistan over the past two years, but the authorities were now sure that Khan and Hussain had also visited Pakistan in 2004.
Pakistan’s security forces have detained eight people from Faisalabad, Lahore and Gujranwala in recent days on suspicion of links with Tanweer.
The two suspects picked up in Gujranwala were both believed to belong to the banned Al Qaeda-linked Kashmiri militant group Jaish-i-Mohammad, according to a security agency source.
There is speculation of a serious crackdown on militant groups is imminent after President Pervez Musharraf ordered police to take tougher measures in light of the London blasts that killed 55 people.
The security agencies are probing Tanweer’s links with militant groups and madrassas in Pakistan. On Saturday, agents of two security agencies questioned teachers, students and other staff of Manzoor-ul-Islam, a madrassa in Lahore which Tanweer was thought to have visited in 2004.
The madrassa is connected to Jaish, an unpredictable group that has splintered into smaller cells but school official denied any link with Tanweer.—Reuters
