Britain said it would introduce new laws to prevent Islamic radicals who glorify terrorism from entering the country, while officials said they had identified all the 56 people known to have died in the London transit bombings.
Britain's Muslim leaders demanded a judicial inquiry into what motivated the four ``homegrown'' suicide bombers who targeted three subway trains and a double-decker bus in London on July 7. In Pakistan, police said they made an ``important'' arrest in the hunt for the mastermind behind the attacks as investigators used a list of telephone numbers provided by Britain to determine who may have had contact with the suspected suicide bombers.
Three of the bombers, all Britons of Pakistani descent, traveled to Karachi, Pakistan last year and officials are trying to determine whether they received training from extremists there. British and Pakistani security officials are cooperating closely on the investigation. A point of focus in the investigation has been a religious school linked with militant groups in Lahore, Pakistan, which security officials believe was visited by suspected bomber Shahzad Tanweer, 22.
Terrorism experts have said since the bombings that examining the suspects' mobile phone records from the months before the attacks would be a crucial line of inquiry.
``In the past such inquiries have proved very fruitful in terrorist'' investigations, said Charles Shoebridge, a former counterterrorism intelligence officer.
A Pakistani intelligence official involved in the investigation said on Sunday that authorities had questioned a businessman whose mobile-telephone number was listed on the phone records of one of the alleged bombers.
Also, a mobile-phone number reportedly linked one of the suspects to an earlier, foiled terror plot. The Guardian newspaper reported the phone number of one of the men had been found by detectives investigating an alleged conspiracy last year to detonate a fertilizer bomb in London.
A senior official, who did not want to be named, said Britain also provided names of several people in Pakistan who allegedly received calls from the suicide bombers over the past year. British detectives believe the four men received help to carry out the attacks and are investigating who provided resources.
The Times and the Guardian newspapers yesterday identified a suspect arrested in Pakistan as Haroon Rashid Aswat, 30. The Times quoted unidentified intelligence sources as saying Aswat visited the home towns of all four bombers and selected targets in London.
The paper also reported that intelligence sources said there had been up to 20 calls between Aswat and two of the bombers in the days before the attacks. Aswat reportedly was once an associate of Abu Hamza al-Masri, the radical imam who is awaiting trial in Britain on charges of incitement to murder.
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