Six NHS Doctors Held Over al-Qa’eda Campaign

The suspected al-Qa’eda terrorists behind the attempted car bomb attacks on Britain were almost all foreign doctors working in the NHS, it can be disclosed today. In a development that will raise questions over the vetting procedures for medics from abroad, it emerged that five of the seven suspects held by police are young Middle Eastern men employed at British hospitals.

{mosimage}One is Mohammed Asha, a “brilliant” neurosurgeon from Jordan. Another being questioned over both the London and Glasgow attacks is Bilal Abdulla, an Iraqi junior doctor who was a passenger in the car that rammed Glasgow airport.

The driver of the Jeep Cherokee -who suffered 90 per cent burns after setting himself on fire in the attack – is said to be a locum doctor working at the hospital where he is now being treated.

Two of his colleagues at the Royal Alexandra Hospital, Paisley, Renfrewshire, were also arrested yesterday and another junior doctor is understood to have been the man police arrested in Liverpool.

Disclosures of the suspected terrorists’ backgrounds – which came as the hunt for any others who may have been connected to the terrorist incidents continued – surprised detectives and the intelligence services.

Five men have been arrested, while a sixth, the Jeep driver, is under police guard in hospital. He was operated on yesterday but doctors said his chances of survival were slim. He has not been officially arrested because detectives are waiting for him to recover and do not want to trigger the 28-day maximum time limit for detaining him as a terrorism suspect.
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The seventh person arrested is Dr Asha’s wife. Last night Scotland Yard said an eighth person was arrested at an undisclosed location, believed to be in Britain, in connection with the London and Glasgow attacks. Meanwhile inquiries were also taking place overseas and there were reports of another arrest overseas.

As Britain remained on its highest state of alert, information emerged on how the suspects were tracked down through their mobile phones and the number plates on their cars.

Clues were gathered from mobiles which were meant to act as detonators in the London car bombs. The bombers called twice to the mobile in a Mercedes parked outside Tiger Tiger nightclub in Haymarket and another in a car parked 200 yards away four times. The devices failed because of technical problems and detectives tracked the calls to identify suspects.

Dr Asha and his wife were stopped by police on the M6 in Cheshire on Saturday in an operation involving up to 15 unmarked police cars. An alert had been put out on his vehicle and it was clocked by Automatic Numberplate Recognition cameras as it headed north. The focus of an ever widening investigation yesterday centred on the Paisley hospital.

The men arrested yesterday, aged 25 and 28, lived in the block attached to the occupational health unit. Police said they were “not of Scottish origin” but refused to elaborate. The arrests were followed by a series of controlled explosions on a blue Vauxhall car in the hospital car park. Police were searching the building and grounds.

A white BMW was blown up the day before and both vehicles are thought to belong to men who worked at the hospital. Two others are believed to have been living in staff accommodation, while two others, who are suspected of launching the attacks in London and Glasgow, were renting a semi-detached house in the village of Houston.

Sources confirmed that Abdulla qualified in Baghdad in 2004 and registered with the General Medical Council in August last year. Sources said the man arrested in a vehicle near Lime Street Station in Liverpool, who had lived in the city, was also a junior doctor.

One of the Liverpool man’s colleagues told a Muslim website yesterday that the suspect, who is 26, was a post-graduate trainee from Bangalore in India. He said he believed it was a case of mistaken identity involving another associate from a hospital in the city, who went abroad a year ago.

He said the suspect, who began work at the hospital just under a year ago, may have been detained because he had mobile chip of the former associate and was using his internet account. He was said to have been travelling home from Penny Lane Mosque late on Saturday night when he was arrested.

Medical sources said the men were probably recruited by the NHS or applied directly to the hospitals. From 2006 foreign applicants had to have a visa allowing them to work in Britain – normally associated with working at a given hospital. It is understood that the suspect in intensive care had been working as a locum at the Royal Alexandra Hospital.

Police sources said last night they hoped they had the main figures in the suspected cell. Officers are trying to ascertain the real identities of the men and believe one may be a British citizen. Another arrest was made at Stansted airport last night.