Police link suspects held over failed attacks

As the Home Secretary announced yesterday that the threat level of a terrorist attack in Britain has been reduced from "critical" to "severe", security forces were beginning to trace an intricate series of links between the eight suspects arrested.

It has emerged that Khalid Ahmed, who is said to have carried out both the London and Glasgow attacks along with Dr Bilal Abdulla, is the brother of Dr Sabeel Ahmed, 26, who was arrested in Liverpool.

Dr Ahmed and Dr Abdulla, 27, carried out the attack at Glasgow airport, and are believed to have driven the two Mercedes "bomb cars" down to central London. Dr Ahmed is suffering from 90 per cent burns and is being treated at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley, near Glasgow, where he used to work.

Sabeel Ahmed, said to have been born in Bangalore in India, worked at the Runcorn Hospital in Cheshire and is also said to be a friend of Dr Mohammed Haneef, also from Bangalore, who worked at the same hospital before moving to Australia where he was arrested on Tuesday.

In a further link, Dr Haneef and Dr Khalid Ahmed are both former students at the the Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences in Bangalore. Dr Haneef, according to police sources, had been in mobile and email contact with Sabeel Ahmed and Khalid Ahmed while in Australia in the lead up to the two bombings.

The Ahmed and Haneef families live within seven miles of each other in Bangalore. Mrs Zakia Ahmed, the mother of Sabeel Ahmed, who is also a doctor, said yesterday: "These boys are innocent. I spoke to Sabeel on the telephone and he said he was keeping well. I asked the people if I should come over to help. I asked my son also. He said, 'If I need you, I will contact you'."

Dr Haneef's wife, Firdous, said: "We have not been able to contact him. He is all alone there. I am trying really hard to contact him through the Indian embassy. We have only heard about his arrest through the media. The Indian government should help us."

Sheikh Rehmatullah, a childhood friend of Sabeel Ahmed, insisted in Bangalore: "He is not like that. He can't be a terrorist. We have played together since we were young, we used to play cricket together. I have known him for the last 20 years. They are very good people, the whole family, they are very educated."

It has also emerged that the families of Dr Mohammed Asha, 26, and Dr Abdulla had known each other in Amman and the parents had told the two young men to "look out" for each other in Britain.

Dr Abdulla was born in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire. His father, Talal, a Sunni, studied as a rheumatologist in Britain and ran a private clinic in Baghdad until two years ago. He then fled to Arbil, in the north of the country, after being intimidated by Mahdi Army militiamen of the radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Around the same time a close friend of Bilal was killed by a Shia death squad, adding to his bitterness, according to Shiraz Maher, who met him while studying in Cambridge.

It was reported in the US media that Dr Abdulla may have been recruited to carry out the British attacks by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the now dead leader of the group al-Qa'ida in Iraq.

Canon Andrew White, a British cleric working in Baghdad, claimed that he met an al-Qa'ida leader in Amman who had warned him about the imminent attack, saying "those who cure you will kill you". Canon White said he passed the message to the Foreign Office. However a Foreign Office spokesman said there is no record of such a warning being given.

Security officials insist that no one in the group was known to be plotting an attack, and that there was no intelligence to suggest that they posed a threat.

Dr Asha was included in MI5's "watch list" after posting a message on the internet condemning the Danish cartoons of Mohammed, according to security sources. Dr Bilal Abdulla is also said to have come to the notice of the security service, after visiting Islamist websites.

The connections

Connections between the alleged NHS bombers:

* Sabeel Ahmed, arrested in Liverpool, is the brother of Khalid Ahmed, who is in custody in Glasgow after driving a jeep packed with gas canisters into Glasgow Airport

* The Jeep used in Glasgow bombings was parked in Liverpool near Sabeel Ahmed's house and thought to have been bought three days after a "dry run" to Glasgow airport by Balil Abdulla, the other man in the jeep

* Sabeel Ahmed is also believed to have shared a flat with Mohammed Haneef, under arrest in Australia, and worked in the same hospital in Liverpool

* Telephone records, according to police sources, also reveal Dr Haneef was in contact with Khalid Ahmed in Glasgow

* The two Saudis arrested in Glasgow, as yet unnamed, worked at the same hospital (Royal Alexandra Glasgow) as Abdulla and K Ahmed

* Mohammed Asha's mobile phone number, according to police sources, was on the mobile phones belonging to Abdulla and K Ahmed

Connections abroad:

Iraq

Abdulla worked in Baghdad hospital. May have had contact with representatives of Zarqawi (according to US sources)

Jordan

Parents of Mohammed Asha knew the parents of Balil Abdulla in Jordan. Khalid Ahmed visited Amman recently.

India

Sabeel and Khalid Ahmed and Mohammed Haneef are all from Bangalore. The two families live eight miles from each other. Their mothers apparently know each other.