'Ticking time bombs' hiding under cover in Britain

MI5 AND Scotland Yard are hunting two men in Britain who have been trained as suicide bombers by Al-Qaeda.

One is a British Asian, the other a black Muslim convert who volunteered for a special suicide squad in an Afghan terrorist training camp.

The manhunt is part of an operation that is regarded by the Home Office as having the utmost priority and sensitivity. Its disclosure coincides with increased security following a wave of suicide bombings and a message last week from an Al-Qaeda leader urging attacks on British and American interests.

Sketches of the two men have been circulated within MI5’s headquarters at Thames House in London and Special Branch. The drawings were made by an American artist from descriptions given by detainees in the US prison camp in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba where 680 terror suspects, including nine from Britain, are being held.

A number of Guantanamo detainees told British and American authorities that the two men were members of a specially recruited squad of “martyrs” prepared to carry out suicide missions. There are concerns that a lone suicide attacker would be difficult to detect and could wreak havoc against a target in Britain.

However, a senior Home Office source pointed out that two years had elapsed since the men were trained and it was possible that they were no longer Al-Qaeda followers. “They were trained by very dangerous men. If they are still committed to the cause, they could be ticking time bombs,” he said.

The black suspect is thought to have been recruited to Islam in Feltham young offenders’ institution in west London where he is believed to have been an inmate at the same time as Richard Reid, the shoe bomber who attempted to blow up an airliner en route from Paris to Miami with explosives in his trainers.

The man has past convictions for drug offences and violence and prayed at Brixton mosque where Reid and Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker in the September 11 attacks, were also worshippers.

Less is known about the British Asian suspect. Two senior Al-Qaeda figures captured in Pakistan independently confirmed details about the British men’s physical descriptions, their backgrounds and their training. The captured Al-Qaeda leaders, Ramzi Binalshibh and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the masterminds behind the September 11 attacks, told interrogators that the two men were Al-Qaeda recruits. Khalid is said to have been involved directly in their training.

MI5 and police are still trying to match descriptions of the two men with a list of possible suspects. The names given to the authorities by the Guantanamo detainees were noms de guerre adopted by the men in Afghanistan and do not correspond directly to the names on their passports.

Concrete barriers were placed around the Houses of Parliament last week and further barriers are expected to be installed to protect other landmarks. The new security measures have been planned for some time but were installed after a summit meeting last week between Eliza Manningham-Buller, director-general of the security service, and George Tenet, the CIA director.

It followed an audiotape from Osama Bin Laden’s top lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri, which urged Muslims to strike at the interests of the United States, Britain, Australia and Norway as well as half a dozen Middle Eastern states, raising concerns it could be interpreted by “sleeping” cells as an order to launch attacks. It followed suicide bombings in Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Chechnya.

A British man blew himself up in Israel in an attack last month that raised for the first time the grim possibility that Britain is harbouring suicide bombers. The body of a second British man, whose bomb failed to explode, was identified last week after being found in the sea off Israel.

Next month the government will publish its draft civil contingencies bill that would give police new powers to seize control of airlines, rail networks, telephone companies, the postal service and even the BBC in the event of a terrorist attack.