Leader visited same training camp as July 7 bomber

Muktar Ibrahim, the "emir" of the 21/7 bomb plotters, is believed to have visited the same terrorist training camp in Pakistan as one of the 7/7 suicide bombers, The Independent can reveal.

Both Ibrahim and Shahzad Tanweer are thought to have attended the camp in Manserah, in a remote area near the Kashmir border, between December 2004 and January 2005.

The training centre is run by Harkat ul-Mujaheddin (the "Movement for Holy Warriors"), a group which was involved in the kidnap and beheading of The Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002 and which trains fighters operating alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The man who organised the kidnapping of Pearl was another British-born Muslim, Omar Saeed Sheikh, who had joined Harkat. Security sources say, however, they have not found a link between Sheikh on one side and Tanweer and Ibrahim on the other.

Eritrea-born Ibrahim, who has convictions for theft, indecent assault on a minor and attempted robbery, had spent three years at a young offenders institution before turning to religion. In May, the men who went on to take part in the 21/7 plot went to a training camp in Cumbria along with a group of other young Muslims. All of them appeared in surveillance photographs taken by MI5 and the police.

Ibrahim was subsequently arrested in October in London's Oxford Street when a scuffle took place while he was handing out Islamic literature. He was charged with a public order offence and released on bail.

However, while awaiting trial, Ibrahim was stopped in December 2004 with two companions at the airport on their way to Pakistan. They were carrying $2,000 (£990), warm weather outdoor clothing, and a medical manual in which treatment for bullet injuries was underlined.

Ibrahim was recognised from the surveillance photographs taken in Cumbria. The three men said they were on their way to a wedding and could offer no explanation for the medial manual. But Ibrahim was allowed to continue with his journey because he was not deemed to have committed any criminal offence and there were no control orders in place at the time.

Both the security service and the intelligence service insist they had no information at the time that Ibrahim was on his way to meet Islamist groups in Pakistan.

Tanweer and another of the 7/7 bombers, Mohammed Sidique Khan, arrived in the Pakistani city of Karachi on a Turkish Airline flight via Istanbul on 19 November last year. Ibrahim is believed to have been in Karachi in December, but it is not known whether he met the other two men.

Tanweer and Khan moved on to Lahore and then Faisalabad where Tanweer visited his father's family, at a place called Chak 477, and talked of his admiration for Osama bin Laden.

Tanweer arrived in Manserah in December. Pakistani sources who place him at the camp cannot recall him being accompanied by Khan or any other British Muslim. It has subsequently emerged, however, that Ibrahim was regarded by the sources as an "African" recruit and not associated with Tanweer and British Asians.

A diplomatic source said: "Tanweer and Ibrahim were, we have information, at Manserah. What we do not know, at this stage, whether they met there or if they were there at the same time."