AP Features, July 12th, 2007
The investigation into failed bomb attacks in Britain is proceeding, even though a suspect believed at the center of the plot was so horribly burned during an attack that it is unlikely police will be able to question or charge him for the foreseeable future.
Kafeel Ahmed, 27, suffered third degree burns over 90 percent of his body when he set himself on fire following an attempt to ram a Jeep into Glasgow's airport.
While Ahmed lies under police guard at a Glasgow hospital's burn unit, officials are unpicking a web of relationships that spin out from the silent suspect.
Unable to question the Indian-born aeronautical engineer, investigators have probed his background, piecing together his work history and scouring phone records to pinpoint his associates and movements, a British government security official said.
"It's exactly the same approach we'd take with a suspect who refuses to respond during interviews," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of his role. "In some ways, it doesn't matter if he speaks or not."
"Once you can identify someone then your inquiries begin and you find out all you can from their biographical data _ whether they are cooperating or not," the official said.
Police have not yet formally arrested Ahmed, partly because he is too severely burned and also because it would set in motion legal wheels that could potentially lead to his release within a month. British law dictates that after being arrested a terror suspect can be held for a maximum of 28 days before being charged or released.
"He has not been arrested," said a police official, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with policy. "It means the 28-day clock hasn't started ticking."
It is the first time since new anti-terror laws were enacted following the Sept. 11 attacks that British police have been faced with a terror suspect too badly injured to be questioned, the official said.
But the situation is not unprecedented. During the 1969-1997 conflict over Northern Ireland, wounded paramilitary members were kept under police guard while hospitalized.
Ahmed is heavily sedated and likely to suffer organ failure, a member of his medical team said. The doctor, who demanded anonymity because he is not authorized to discuss the suspect's condition, said severe burns have left the suspect vulnerable to infection.
"Statistically, he is not likely to live," said Dr. Joseph Feldman, chairman of emergency medicine at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey, who is not connected to Ahmed's treatment.
Another doctor unconnected to the case said Ahmed could potentially respond to police questioning if he regains consciousness, depending on the severity of his condition.
"If he's not on a breathing machine, he should be able to communicate," said Dr. Richard Kagan, director of the Burn Center at the Shriner's University Hospital in Cincinnati. "But whether or not he's clear-minded enough to talk to the police is another question."
Prosecutors say Ahmed is suspected of crashing a Jeep Cherokee loaded with gas canisters and gasoline into Glasgow airport June 30 _ a day after police found two unexploded car bombs in central London.
His alleged accomplice in the Jeep, Bilal Abdullah, is a 27-year-old doctor born in Britain and raised in Iraq. They are alleged to have carried out attempted bombings in London before returning to Scotland _ where Abdullah worked at a Glasgow-area hospital _ and attacking the airport.
Abdullah is so far the only person charged among eight suspects detained over the failed attacks, accused by prosecutors of conspiring to set off explosions. British authorities froze Abdullah's assets. The Bank of England, in making the freeze public Wednesday, also revealed that Bilal Abdullah has had a British passport for at least nine years.
Sabeel Ahmed, 26, brother of the man who was burned, was arrested in Liverpool and is being questioned by London police. Investigators suspect that Kafeel Ahmed introduced his brother to Mohammed Asha, a neurosurgeon arrested with wife Marwa on a highway in northern England.
The investigation has reached beyond Britain.
An Indian, Mohammad Haneef was arrested in Australia. On Wednesday, Haneef spoke to his wife, Arshiya Firdaus, by phone. She is living in India with their 2-week-old daughter, who Haneef has never seen.
"He spoke for just one minute but he told her that he was well and he sent everyone at home his love and prayers," Muhammad Shuaib, Haneef's brother, said, sitting in the living room of the family's Bangalore home.
It was the first time anyone in the family had heard from Haneef since his July 2 arrest.
His family says Haneef was raised in an observant but moderate home by his schoolteacher father and homemaker mother.
Sabeel Ahmed and Haneef both attended B.R. Ambedkar Medical College in Bangalore, where principal B.R. Ramesh remembered them as being well-adjusted and good-natured.
"Until anything is proven, we can't believe this," he said.
In Australia, a magistrate gave police permission to hold Haneef without charge for another two days under counterterrorism laws and adjourned a hearing in which his lawyers are demanding he be freed or charged. Defense lawyer Peter Russo said that during the hearing police had disclosed some of their reasons for wanting to keep Haneef in custody, but that he could not reveal the information because it was protected as a matter of national security.
Security officials said they have not yet established when or where the group was radicalized, how its members met or when attack plans were drawn up.
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Associated Press Writers Muneeza Naqvi in Bangalore, India, Ben McConville, in Edinburgh, Scotland, Maria Cheng in London and contributed to this report.
