Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

London terror attacks

London bombing suspect arrested

Authorities say they believe the Somali was one of four men involved in the failed attacks last week.

BIRMINGHAM, England - Police stormed a brown-brick duplex Wednesday and used a stun gun to arrest a Somali suspected of being one of four men behind botched attacks in London - a breakthrough that could yield the inside story on terror bombings that set the British capital on edge.

Yasin Hassan Omar, 24, was taken to a top-security police station in London, and a key official called the arrest significant - but said that until all the bombers were in custody, the threat remained.

Dozens of antiterrorist police and bomb disposal experts, some in heavy body armor, swept into a neighborhood of Britain's second-largest city to arrest Omar, a Somali citizen with British residency who is suspected in the failed July 21 attack on the Warren Street subway station.

Officials said he was wearing a backpack and tussled with police, the BBC reported.

They also found a suspicious package, which was being scrutinized by explosives experts.

Police also detained three other men at a house about 2 miles away, saying the arrests were linked to the second set of failed bombings, but declining to comment further. In all, 11 suspects are held, though only Omar is thought to be one of the bombers, police said.

Interrogations of Omar may be key to determining whether the second set of bombings July 21 are linked to the July 7 suicide attacks that killed 56 people, including the four bombers.

After arresting Omar, police evacuated up to 100 homes and sent a bomb squad into the Small Heath neighborhood in Birmingham, 120 miles northwest of London.

They allowed a few residents to pick up belongings during the day, but kept up cordons near Omar's rundown house next to a sprawling park.

Other raids were carried out Wednesday in south London's Stockwell district, where officers arrested three women on suspicion of "harboring offenders," and on two more London homes, where no arrests were made but forensic tests were conducted, police said. Police are still seeking three other men believed involved in the failed bombing attempts.

As the investigation unfolded, the body of a Brazilian man accidentally shot to death by police in a London subway car Friday was flown home to his family. The shooting has put pressure on the police, who practice a policy of shoot-to-kill with suspected terrorists.

In an interview with Channel Four News, the chief of the metropolitan police, Sir Ian Blair, said that since July 7 there had been 250 incidents in which police believed they were pursuing a suicide bomber. Seven came close to ending like the case of Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian electrician who was shot seven times in the head and once in the shoulder in a subway station in south London.

Information from the New York Times was used in this report.

[Last modified July 28, 2005, 01:10:15]