AP Features, July 5th, 2007
The families of two Indian doctors detained in connection with failed terror plots in Britain have insisted that the young men were innocent and had nothing to do with terrorism.
Australian authorities say they detained Muhammad Haneef, 27, late Monday at the Brisbane airport as he tried to board a flight, and he was arrested based on information forwarded by British officials.
"He has been detained unnecessarily. He is innocent," Qurat-ul-ain, Haneef's mother, told The Associated Press in the southern Indian city of Bangalore on Wednesday. She said he was heading to India to see his newborn daughter when he was arrested.
Zakia Ahmed, the mother of Sabeel Ahmed, 26, who was detained Saturday in Liverpool, said both men were innocent.
"Both these boys are just caught in between," Zakia Ahmed, a doctor, said Wednesday in front of her Bangalore home, which is in an upscale neighborhood about 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) away from Haneef's home.
She said she spoke to Ahmed briefly on Tuesday and he was "keeping well."
"I asked the people if I should come over to help; I asked my son also," she said. "He said, 'If I need you, I will contact you.'"
She said Haneef and her son were friends and were related, though she didn't explain how. They studied at the same medical college in Bangalore, she said.
Haneef, the son of a school teacher, was raised in the Karnataka state town of Moodigere. His family now lives in an apartment in an upscale area of Bangalore where they moved after his father died 10 years ago.
He studied at the Rajiv Gandhi Health University's medical college in Bangalore from 1997-2002, The Times of India newspaper quoted S. Sachhidanand, a university registrar, as saying.
Haneef and Ahmed are two of eight men _ all of them health workers _ detained in connection with failed car bomb plots Friday and Saturday in London and Glasgow, Scotland.
Officials in Australia, where Haneef worked at a hospital, have noted publicly that Haneef had a one-way ticket when he was arrested at the airport.
Sumaiya, Haneef's sister, said Wednesday that Haneef was coming to Bangalore from Australia to see his daughter, who was born a week ago. Sumaiya uses one name.
