Police quiz bomb suspects as Italy launches raids

Hussain Osman

LONDON/ROME - Police are questioning four suspects over failed bomb attacks on London's transport system as Italian investigators launched raids linked to the arrest of one of the suspected bombers.

Police believe they have captured all four men they were seeking over the July 21 botched bombings on three underground trains and a bus, which came exactly two weeks after four bombers killed themselves and 52 people in similar attacks.

After the culmination on Friday of a dramatic international manhunt for suspected Islamist militants, three of the men are in custody in Britain and a fourth is being held in Rome.

London police on Friday also arrested another suspect they believe to be significant in the case.

The man arrested in Italy, named by authorities there as Osman Hussain, was subject to an extradition hearing on Saturday at the prison where he was being held.

"It's in a completely initial phase," his state-appointed lawyer Antonietta Sonnessa said.

Police chiefs have warned that Britain -- still coming to terms with news that four British Muslims carried out the deadly July 7 attacks -- could face more danger.

They have stressed Britain's biggest investigation is far from over as they look for anyone who helped the bombers.

Forensic specialists were examining the two homes police raided in west London on Friday for clues.

In Italy, police carried out at least 15 searches stemming from the arrest in Rome of Hussain, wanted over the attempted bombing of a train at Shepherd's Bush in west London.

Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu said Hussain had evaded police searches with the help of contacts among Italy's Ethiopian and Eritrean immigrant communities.

"From the investigations, it has been possible to identify a dense network of individuals belonging to the Eritrean and Ethiopian communities in Italy believed to have helped him cover his tracks," Pisanu told the lower house of parliament.

TRACKED BY CELL PHONE

Pisanu said Hussain was born in Ethiopia, not Somalia as the government reported on Friday. Hussain left London's Waterloo train station for continental Europe on July 26, he added.

An Italian police source who asked not to be named told Reuters that investigators had been able to find Hussain by tracking the mobile phone he was carrying, which originally belonged to Hussain's brother-in-law, a British resident.

British officials passed Italy that telephone number, the source said.

On Friday, British police swooped on a housing estate in west London, arresting two men who identified themselves as Ibrahim Muktar Said and Ramzi Mohammed.

They were forced to strip before their arrests to show they had no explosives strapped to them.

Media, citing police sources, said the other man "significant to the case" arrested on Friday was Mohammed's brother. A police spokesman declined to confirm the man's identity.

A fifth bomb was found in bushes in a west London park two days after the failed attacks. Detectives have been trying to establish whether the find indicates a fifth bomber also tried and failed to carry out an attack, unnoticed by the public.

The first prime suspect to be arrested was Yasin Hassan Omar, a Somali who came to Britain as a child. He was seized in a dawn raid in Birmingham, central England, on Wednesday.

He is suspected of trying to explode a bomb at Warren Street station on London's underground railway network.

A total of 12 people are in British police custody as part of the probe into the July 21 attacks, police said on Saturday.

Detectives are examining more than 8500 documents and 35,000 security camera tapes in the investigation into the two waves of attacks, the police statement added.

- REUTERS