U.K. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith
July 3 (Bloomberg) -- Australian police arrested an Indian doctor in connection with an attack on Glasgow's airport and two attempted car bombings in London that are alleged to have been carried out by medics. Six men and a woman are held in the U.K.
A counterterrorism team detained the 27-year-old man at Brisbane International Airport late yesterday as he tried to leave Australia, Attorney-General Philip Ruddock told reporters in Canberra. Ruddock declined to say how the man, who isn't an Australian citizen, may be linked to the U.K. case. Australia's terrorist-threat level remains at ``medium,'' he said.
The Indian man is one of four non-British doctors affiliated with the U.K.'s National Health Service to be held in connection with the incidents June 30 in Glasgow and June 29 in London, suggesting that Britain's hospitals may have been penetrated by a terrorist network.
The Glasgow attack and attempted London bombings prompted the biggest terrorism alert in the U.K. since authorities foiled an Islamist plot in August to blow up planes flying from Heathrow airport to the U.S. Terrorists killed 52 people in London on July 7, 2005, in suicide bombings on the subway and a bus.
Two men were arrested at Glasgow International Airport after their Jeep Cherokee, filled with flammable material, rammed into a terminal entrance and caught fire on impact. One was hospitalized for burns.
The airport attack came as police were conducting one of their biggest manhunts after dismantling two car bombs made from gas canisters, gasoline and nails left in the heart of London's West End shopping and theater district.
`Caring Profession'
``We were shocked to hear of the recent attempted bombings. The news that members of a caring profession may be involved in these atrocities was even more appalling,'' Hamish Meldrum, chairman of British Medical Association Council, said today in an e-mailed statement. ``It would be dreadful if the trust that exists between patients and doctors, whatever their background, was harmed by these events.
Australian security officers, who were ``acting on advice from U.K. authorities,'' were searching properties in the northern state of Queensland where the suspect worked as a senior doctor at the Gold Coast Hospital, Ruddock said. The suspect held a one-way ticket to Pakistan, Sky News reported.
The man, an Australian resident, hasn't been charged and is helping police with their inquiries, Ruddock added.
``We are not aware of any threat to any building or any activity in Queensland at all,'' state Premier Peter Beattie told reporters today.
Recruited by U.K.
The Indian doctor was recruited through an advertisement in the British Medical Journal and had worked in Australia since September, Beattie said. He served his internship in India and worked as a doctor in Liverpool, in northwestern England, before moving to Queensland, Beattie added.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard told reporters the man's visa was sponsored by the Queensland Health Department.
The doctor held in Australia is Mohammed Haneef, said a spokeswoman for the U.K.'s North Cheshire NHS Trust. He worked as a substitute doctor at the Halton Hospital in Runcorn, in Cheshire, until 2005, she said. The doctor arrested in Liverpool on June 30 also worked at the Halton Hospital and at Warrington Hospital, the spokeswoman said. She declined to name him.
Another doctor, who also came to Australia from Liverpool, is being questioned by Australian police, Beattie said, adding that authorities are ``not aware of any particular link'' to the plot. Three of the U.K. detainees are doctors, U.K. police said.
Blackburn Arrests
Two men were arrested today under the Terrorism Act in an industrial area of Blackburn, in northwestern England, said Lancashire police, add that it is ``too early'' to say whether the arrests are linked to events in London and Glasgow. Sky News said the arrests were linked to a delivery of gas canisters.
U.S. law enforcement officials received intelligence reports two weeks ago warning of terrorist attacks against airport infrastructure and aircraft in Glasgow and Prague, ABC News reported, citing an unidentified senior U.S. official. The information didn't reach officials in Scotland, ABC said.
U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown's government stepped up security nationwide in response to the Glasgow attack and the attempted bombings in London.
Controls were tightened at airports, cars checked and more police patrolled public areas, including London's two financial districts, the City and Canary Wharf. The U.K. Home Office raised its terrorist threat level to ``critical,'' the highest, meaning an attack is expected imminently.
Sniffer dogs are checking cars entering the Canary Wharf office complex in east London, where companies such Citigroup Inc, HSBC Plc and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc employ 82,000 workers.
Heathrow Delays
BAA Plc, which runs London's Heathrow airport, said it is increasing passenger searches after a suspect package was found in Terminal 4. The searches are resulting in delays to flights.
At the Wimbledon tennis championships in southwest London, concrete blocks are being use to protect entry and exit points and the organizers asked visitors to use public transportation rather than private cars.
``You can never be certain but clearly the vast majority of people involved in this have been picked up,'' London Mayor Ken Livingstone told reporters today. The speed of the police investigation has been ``breathtaking,'' he said.
London Visitors
The terrorism threat isn't expected to deter the more than 2 million people who are expected in London this weekend for events including the Tour de France cycling competition, the mayor said. There will be extra police at key locations, Livingstone said.
Among the seven detained in Scotland and northern England, are two men, 25 and 28, who were arrested July 1 in the Paisley area, southwest of Glasgow, under anti-terrorism laws, police said, without giving further details. A man, 26, was arrested in Liverpool on the same day. A 26-year-old man and a 27-year-old woman were arrested July 30 on the M6 highway in northwest England. The man arrested on the M6 is a neurosurgeon. His family in Jordan denied he had any connection to extremism.
Three of the four suspects arrested in Scotland have been moved to London, the Scottish Crown Office said in a statement. They include one of the men detained at the scene of the attack on Glasgow airport, and the two men arrested in the Paisley area.
The other suspect, who was in the vehicle used to attack the airport, remains in a critical condition in a Scottish hospital.
Controlled Explosion
Yesterday, police sealed off a building that provides temporary accommodation for doctors at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley and searched the offices of a doctor at University Hospital in North Staffordshire, north of Birmingham. Today, police carried out a controlled explosion on a car parked outside a Glasgow mosque, Sky News said.
In London, police were examining images from security cameras to try to establish the cars' routes into the center of the city. They found the first bomb in a Mercedes parked outside a packed nightclub in Haymarket, close to Piccadilly Circus, at 1:30 a.m. on June 29. The second device, in a Mercedes parked between Haymarket and Trafalgar Square, was found hours after it was towed to a garage on Park Lane for being parked illegally.
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