Tue, Aug 09, 2005 page6

• Zambia deports terror suspects

  • NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
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  Zambian authorities deported a suspected operative of al-Qaeda to Britain on Sunday, and the police here said the US was seeking his extradition.

  The man, Haroon Rashid Aswat, who is a British citizen, has been indicted in the US on charges that he tried to set up a terrorist training camp in Bly, Oregon, in 1999.

  The deportation coincided with a fresh wave of indictments against suspects in the attacks in London on July 21, when four bombs failed to detonate properly.

  Late on Sunday the police announced that five people -- including two main suspects -- had been charged with crimes varying from attempted murder to complicity in evading arrest in the attacks on three subway trains and a bus that mimicked the bloody bombings on July 7.

  The new indictments mean that three of the four men suspected of leaving bombs on the transit system on July 21 have been charged in the attacks that stunned London just two weeks after 56 people, including four bombers, there were killed and hundreds injured.

  The fourth individual, Hussain Osman, also known as Hamdi Issac, is being held in Rome. The first of the major suspects to be indicted was Yassin Hassan Omar, a 24-year-old Somali, who was formally charged on Saturday with attempted murder, conspiracy to murder and unlawful possession of explosives.

  On Sunday, the other two major suspects, identified by the police as Ibrahim Muktar Said, 27, and Ramzi Mohamed, 23, were indicted on the same charges.

  Naturalized briton

  Said, a naturalized Briton of Eritrean descent, is accused of trying to bomb a bus in east London, and Mohamed, about whom little had been made public, is said to have attacked a subway train near Oval station in south London.

  A list of charges distributed by the police Sunday included names not previously made public. One name was of Manfo Kwaku Asiedu, 32, of North London, who was charged with conspiracy to murder and conspiring in the unlawful use of explosives, adding to speculation that he may be a so-called fifth bomber, responsible for explosives found abandoned in a park.

  The two other men charged late on Sunday were accused of helping people evade arrest. They were identified as Siraj Yassin Abdullah Ali, 30, and Wharbi Mohammed, 22, initially thought to be a brother of Ramzi Mohammed.

  In Italy, Osman has said through a court-appointed Italian lawyer that the July 21 attackers did not mean to kill anyone, but the British police have said they were carrying explosives that could have spread carnage on the same scale as the July 7 bombings. Britain is seeking his extradition.

  After the July 7 attacks, there had been initial reports of a link between the four attackers and Aswat, who was flown back to London from Zambia on Sunday.

  But the speed with which proceedings on the American extradition request are to begin in London -- the first hearing was set for today -- suggested that the British police did not plan to question him or charge him.

  Conspired to train

  In a statement, the police said the US wanted Aswat on charges that between Oct. 1, 1999, and April 30, 2000 -- long before the Sept. 11 attacks and the subsequent war in Afghanistan -- he conspired to train people to fight a holy war in Afghanistan, presumably on the side of the Taliban, who were then its rulers.

  Aswat, 30, has reportedly boasted that he has ties to Osama bin Laden. He is accused in the US of working with Abu Hamza al-Masri, an Egyptian-born cleric embroiled in judicial hearings in Britain to determine whether it will approve his extradition to the US. Like Aswat, al-Masri is accused of involvement in the 1999 plot to establish a training camp in Oregon.

  Aswat lived in Dewsbury, in northern England, in the same area as some of the July 7 bombers.

  Aswat was detained in Zambia on July 20. The US had reportedly sought Aswat's arrest earlier, while he was in South Africa, but he slipped away through Botswana to Zambia.

  Possible connection

  In the investigation into the July 7 attacks in London, the police had reportedly initially sought to trace 20 phone calls made by Aswat to establish whether he was linked to the London bombings, but the police here have since played down the possibility of a connection.

  The investigation has thrown up many theories, one of them of a link -- as reported in British newspapers on Sunday -- to two Moroccans suspected as Qaeda members who were shot dead in Saudi Arabia earlier this year. The men were identified in news reports as Abdulkarim el-Mejjati and Younis al-Hayyari.

  The Saudi ambassador in London, Prince Turki al-Faisal, told BBC television on Sunday that it was "premature" to speak of such a link. "It is under investigation by both your security forces and our security forces," he said.
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