President Pervez Musharraf's is due to make a televised address to the nation at 8.00 p.m. on Thursday to explain a crackdown that has angered Islamists. Analysts expect Musharraf will be keen to show his government is not under any foreign pressure and that the aggressive measures taken are to fight internal threats to security rather than a reaction to the London bombings. Despite the denials, security officials say some of those in detention are believed to have links with the bombers, three of whom were Britons of Pakistani descent. The fourth was a Briton of Jamaican origin.

Certainly Pakistan's crackdown began in Faisalabad and Lahore, two cities in the eastern province of Punjab where intelligences sources say at least one of the bombers, Shehzad Tanweer, visited several madrasas.

Fifty more people were detained in Punjab overnight, during raids around the city of Multan, security sources said.

In the southern province of Sindh, police have arrested 45 people, including Maulana Ali Sher Hyderi, a top leader of Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, a Sunni extremist group with a record for attacks on the country's minority Shi'ite Muslims.

GONE UNDERGROUND

But in Karachi, Sindh's capital, Deputy Inspector General of police Mushtaq Shah said no arrests were made during overnight raids on several madrasas and mosques. "It appears that they have gone undergound but we are chasing them," he said.

Among those rounded up in Punjab were members of the outlawed Jaish-e-Mohammad and a splinter group which have a history of running with foreign al Qaeda operatives hiding in Pakistan.

Jaish was linked to assassination attempts on Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz in the last 18 months, but there had not been a full clamp down on its top leadership.

Jaish's main activity in the past was sending guerrillas to fight Indian rule in Kashmir and for that reason, analysts say, the authorities were reluctant to move against it too strongly.

Similarly, Western powers are impatient with Pakistan's failure to curb those madrasas, among thousands of bone fide religious schools, that are suspected of breeding extremism.

"One can only hope that this time the government is really serious about cracking down on elements promoting terrorism," Pakistani daily The News wrote in an editorial on Thursday.

"The nation will wait and see if the government will follow up on Tuesday night's actions, and if they will indeed be effective in the long-term." - reuters

'Batley man' linked to bin Laden and bombers

By Tony Harney - A BRITISH intelligence team in Zambia is today questioning a West Yorkshire man said to have been a personal body guard to Osama bin Laden and to have master-minded the London July 7 bombings.

30th July - Haroon Rashid Aswat, believed to have lived in Batley for 20 years and who has been linked to radical Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri, is reported to have flown out of Heathrow just hours before 56 people were killed and hundreds injured when blasts wrecked three tube trains and a London bus. Aswat, who is understood to have left Batley 10 years ago, is said to have entered the UK by ferry a fortnight before the first wave of bombings. Searches of mobile phone records by British anti-terrorist police and secret service agents are understood to have found that he made numerous phone calls to the four suicide bombers.

American authorities have revealed they have been hunting the man for several years. They claim he master-minded the London horror although Scotland Yard has refused to confirm that theory.

Zambian authorities said last night that while in custody Aswat admitted he had acted as a bodyguard to Osama bin Laden. That man, claim the Americans has been active around the world and their main interest focuses on a scheme to set up a terrorist training camp on a ranch in Oregon.

It emerged today that Aswat had made mobile telephone calls to two of the Yorkshire July 7 suicide bombers and had possibly visited Dewsbury in the days before the bombings. Dewsbury was the home town of Mohammed Sidique Khan, one of the suicide bombers. Aswat, or Ashwad as he was sometimes known was arrested in Lusaka, Zambia 11 days ago after entering the country from Botswana. An American source claimed that earlier this year their intelligence network had traced Aswat to South Africa, but an attempt to arrest him there failed because of a lack of co-operation from the government.

Training

The same source says that Aswat was known to have been in America in 1999 and 2000 checking out an Oregon ranch they believed was intended for use as a terrorist training camp.

An American Muslim was later convicted of plotting against US forces in Afghanistan and gave evidence concerning Aswat which caused the US to place him on a terrorism wanted list.

A Scotland Yard spokesman said: "The Americans are obviously very interested in this arrest in Zambia and we are happy for them to take precedence. The man in custody there is not our priority at the moment."

Despite that statement it is believed that representatives of both British and American authorities are now in Zambia holding discussions over his possible extradition. A Batley family confirmed to the Yorkshire Evening Post they do have a son of the same name. They described him as an "angry young man" who they have had little contact with for 10 years.

But they stressed they have no confirmation that their son is the same Haroon Rashid Aswat. They said: "We are being asked about Haroon Rashid Aswat.

"He has not lived at this house and we have not had contact with him for many years.

"We ask the press to go away and we ask police to make sure our privacy is not invaded further."

One report said Aswat had left the UK to fight in Afghanistan.

Two years ago it was suspected Aswat had been killed in Afghanistan when his British passport was found on the body of a Taliban soldier.

But it was later revealed he had slipped into Pakistan where it is claimed he became a trusted associate of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

At least three of the July 7 bombers – Khan, 30, from Dewsbury, Hasib Hussain, 18, from Holbeck, and Shehzad Tanweer, 22, from Beeston – visited Pakistan in the months before the attacks.

Aswat's phone number is thought to have been found on Khan's mobile phone. - leedstoday.net

Zambia Agrees to Hand Over Briton

British investigators seek to question the alleged Al Qaeda member, who may be linked to the London bombings. He is also wanted by the U.S.

By Sebastian Rotella and Jeffrey Fleishman, Times Staff Writers

LONDON - Zambia will extradite to Britain an alleged Al Qaeda operative suspected of having links to the bombers who struck London last month and of attempting to start a terrorist training camp in the U.S., officials said Wednesday.

Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa told reporters in the capital, Lusaka, that after discussions with British and U.S. officials, his nation had agreed to hand Haroon Rashid Aswat over to British authorities.

Authorities in Zambia said Aswat, 30, a British citizen of Indian descent, was believed to have entered the southern African country July 6, one day before bombs on three London subway trains and a bus killed 52 commuters and the four bombers.

Zambia captured Aswat on July 20, an arrest first reported by the Los Angeles Times, and British and U.S. counter-terrorism agents questioned him in custody there, Western officials said. The agents held discussions with Zambian authorities about where Aswat should be prosecuted, officials said.

Although the British government sought to have him sent to London, officials here continued to be cautious about Aswat's possible involvement in the bombings. He piqued the interest of investigators after they found that as many as 20 calls were made between at least one of the bombers and a cellphone associated with Aswat, officials said. But it remains unclear whether Aswat was using the phone at the time and whether the calls were related to the bomb plot, U.S. and British officials said.

Investigators also want to interrogate Aswat here about his alleged involvement in other terrorist activity, a British official said Wednesday.

"It seems that Zambia will send him here," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Not because he's thought to be some kind of mastermind of the London bombings, as some newspapers have suggested. We are being very cautious about such allegations. He is wanted for questioning in regard to Al Qaeda terrorism."

The official said he did not think there had been serious tensions with Washington about where Aswat should be sent. Aswat might still be sent to the U.S. to face charges if British investigators cannot build a case against him, the official said.

"I guess it's more straightforward to have him sent here because he is a British citizen," the official said. "I don't have the impression that the U.S. tried to have him extradited from Zambia. We and the Americans both agree that we would like to have him questioned."

Aswat is a well-traveled figure who has been under U.S. and British scrutiny for several years. He has been living in South Africa and traveling extensively in Africa at a time when Western counter-terrorism agents are increasingly concerned about the rise of Islamic extremism on the continent.

South African intelligence agents had Aswat under surveillance in the months before his arrest in Zambia at the request of American and British counterparts, officials said Wednesday. At one point after the July 7 attacks, Pakistani officials said they had captured Aswat, but it turned out to be another Briton with a similar name.

Aswat grew up in the same area of northern England as three of the four bombers. A gaunt man with an unruly beard, he allegedly became a close associate of Abu Hamza al Masri, a radical Muslim cleric, in the late 1990s when Abu Hamza's Finsbury Park Mosque in North London was allegedly an international crossroads for extremists.

Like others active at the mosque, Aswat is alleged to have spent time at one of Osama bin Laden's training camps in Afghanistan, U.S. and British officials said.

Further feeding suspicions about his possible role in the London cases, several suspects in the follow-up transit bombings that were attempted July 21 worshiped at Finsbury Park Mosque, a senior Italian anti-terrorism official said.

But despite similarities in the targets, methods and explosives used, investigators have not disclosed concrete evidence, involving Aswat or otherwise, linking the July 7 and July 21 incidents.

"We just don't know about his role, if any, in the July 7 and July 21 attacks in London," said Charles Heyman, a defense expert with Jane's Information Group. "What we do know is that a number of attacks have been thwarted in London, at least five and possibly 10 [in recent years]. He may have been involved somehow…. The London police are just trying to put a few more pieces into this jigsaw puzzle."

Aswat's family has expressed concern that he might end up at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

U.S. agents are investigating him in connection with the prosecution of Abu Hamza and others in a plot to set up a training camp near Bly, Ore., about six years ago. Aswat allegedly traveled to the U.S. to meet with prospective militants and prepare a rural training site for them, although the project was abandoned, U.S. investigators say.

During visits to the U.S. in 1999 and 2000, Aswat allegedly described himself as Bin Laden's "hit man," according to court records.

In other developments Wednesday, British police filed their first charges in connection with the two attack plots. Ismael Abdurahman, a 23-year-old resident of South London, will go to court today to face charges that he withheld information that could have helped police catch suspects, authorities said. - la times.com

JERRICK: So a couple of them now have Somali connections?

LOFTUS: Yeah, it was not unusual. Somalia, Eritrea, the first group of course were primarily Pakistani. But what they had in common was they were all emigrant groups in Britain, recruited by this Al-Muhajiroun group. They were headed by the, Captain Hook, the imam in London the Finsbury Mosque, without the arm. He was the head of that organization. Now his assistant was a guy named Aswat, Haroon Rashid Aswat. JERRICK: Aswat, who they picked up.

LOFTUS: Right, Aswat is believed to be the mastermind of all the bombings in London.

JERRICK: On 7/7 and 7/21, this is the guy we think.

LOFTUS: This is the guy, and what's really embarrassing is that the entire British police are out chasing him, and one wing of the British government, MI6 or the British Secret Service, has been hiding him. And this has been a real source of contention between the CIA, the Justice Department, and Britain.

- vis IMCUK

watch video [thanks to infowars]

Al-Qaida warns of more London destruction

Mark Oliver and agencies - Thursday August 4, 2005

Ayman al-Zawahri, al-Qaida's second-in-command, speaks in a video aired by al-Jazeera in which he warned Britons that Tony Blair's policies will bring more destruction to London.Photograph: al-Jazeera/Reuters

The deputy of the al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden warned in a video broadcast today that Tony Blair's policies would bring "more destruction" to London.

The message, delivered by Ayman al-Zawahri, was broadcast by the Qatar-based al-Jazeera television station, which has aired tapes from Bin Laden and Zawahri in the past.

It is the first message from al-Qaida's inner circle to directly mention the July 7 London suicide bombings, in which 52 people were killed. Zawahri described the bombs as "volcanoes of wrath". "Blair's policies will bring more destruction to Britons after the London explosions, God willing," he said.

The Egyptian-born terrorist leader also appeared to refer to an audio tape broadcast by the al-Arabiya television station last April. In that tape, a speaker purported to be Bin Laden offered a ceasefire to nations deciding not to "interfere" in Muslim countries, although the offer was not extended to the US.

In the tape broadcast today, Zawahri - referring to countries which have contributed troops to US-led forces in Iraq - said: "As to the nations of the crusader alliance, we have offered you a truce if you leave the land of Islam. "Hasn't Sheik Osama bin Laden told you that you will not dream of security before there is security in Palestine and before all the infidel armies withdraw from the land of Mohammed? "Instead, you spilled blood like rivers in our countries, and we exploded the volcanoes of wrath in your countries. Our message is clear: you will not be safe until you withdraw from our land, stop stealing our oil and wealth and stop supporting the corrupt rulers."

He also warned the US that tens of thousands of its military personnel would die if it did not immediately withdraw from Iraq. "As for you, the Americans, what you have seen in New York and Washington, what losses that you see in Afghanistan and Iraq, despite the media blackout, is merely the losses of the initial clashes," he said. "If you go on with the same policy of aggression against Muslims, you will see, with God's will, what will make you forget the horrible things in Vietnam and Afghanistan."

Referring to the US president, George Bush, the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, he said: "The truth that has been kept from you by Bush, Rice and Rumsfeld is that there is no way out of Iraq without immediate withdrawal, and any delay on this means only more dead, more losses. "If you don't leave today, certainly you will leave tomorrow, and after tens of thousands of dead, and double that figure in disabled and wounded."

Downing Street refused to make any immediate comment on the tape. In July, a report by the foreign policy thinktank Chatham House said there was a link between the Iraq war and the London bombings.

Mr Blair at first denied the war was a factor. He later said it was "an excuse", but argued that terrorists with an "evil ideology" would always find grievances to justify attacks.

Today's tape showed the Egyptian-born Zawahri wearing white robes, with an AK47 assault rifle by his side. Behind him was a muddy brown sack cloth of a kind often used in al-Qaida tapes to hide geographical features that could provide clues to where they were filmed. The new tape came as around 6,000 police were out in force in a major London security operation today.

Officers patrolled the capital's public transport system exactly four weeks after the July 7 attacks and a fortnight after the failed July 21 bombings. Analysts said it was likely al-Qaida had timed the message to be broadcast on a Thursday. The July 7 attacks were carried out by four suicide bombers, three of whom lived in West Yorkshire.

Experts believe it is unlikely that they were planned with the direct involvement of the al-Qaida leadership, and were more likely to have been inspired by the terror group in a similar way to the Madrid bombings of March 2004, which claimed 191 lives. However there has been speculation that the London plots could have been orchestrated by a "mastermind" who travelled to the country, recruited Britons and gave them training and help with explosives, fleeing before the attacks were carried out.

Zawahri is a former eye doctor who merged his militant faction with al-Qaida in Afghanistan in the late 90s. Today's tape was the first from him since September 2004, when he said the US was on the brink of defeat in both Iraq and Afghanistan. That message was also broadcast on al-Jazeera.

The last videotape from Bin Laden emerged on October 29 last year, prior to the November 2 US elections. He threatened another attack on the US, saying: "Bush is still deceiving you ... and therefore the reasons are still there to repeat what happened". Bin Laden is suspected to be hiding somewhere around the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and is the subject of a huge military manhunt that has so far proved fruitless. - Guardian.co.uk

Bush: Al Qaeda threats won't deter U.S.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Steve.

Q Thanks, sir. Al Qaeda's number two, Dr. al-Zawahiri, is warning that attacks will continue until U.S. troops leave Iraq. How serious a threat is this? And after so many Marines were killed this week, what's being done to improve their safety?

PRESIDENT BUSH: First, let me say that we mourn the loss of every fallen troop. And the community outside of Cleveland, Brook Park, Ohio, suffered mightily over the last couple of days. It's -- the people of Brook Park and the family members of those who lost their life, I hope they can take comfort in the fact that millions of their fellow citizens pray for them. I hope they also take comfort in the understanding that the sacrifice was made in a noble cause.

We're laying the foundation of peace for generations to come. We're defeating the terrorists in a place like Iraq so we don't have to face them here at home. And, as well, we're spreading democracy and freedom to parts of the world that are desperate for democracy and freedom.

Terror suspect Aswat deported and arrested in UK

Sunday, 7th August 2005, 21:43 - A British al Qa'eda suspect was tonight arrested as he arrived back in Britain following deportation from Zambia. Haroon Rashid Aswat, 30, was detained by the Metropolitan Police on landing at RAF Northolt, Middlesex, at 6pm, in response to a US extradition request.

Aswat, of no fixed abode, has been taken into custody at a central London police station and will appear at Bow Street Magistrates Court, sitting at Belmarsh maximum security jail, on Monday.

Aswat, who grew up in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, was arrested last week in the Zambian capital, Lusaka. The US government claims he tried to set up a terrorist training camp in Oregon in the 1990s.

The extradition warrants issued on behalf of the US allege that Aswat: "between October 1 1999 and April 30 2000, conspired with others to control and manage an association of persons in Bly, Oregon, who would be organised and trained, or organised and equipped, for the purpose of enabling them to be employed for the use or display of physical force in promoting a political object, namely to make hijrah to, and to fight jihad in, Afghanistan.

"Between October 1 1999 and April 30 2000, conspired with others to control and manage an association of persons in Bly, Oregon, who would be organised and trained, or organised and equipped, in such manner as to arouse reasonable apprehension that they were organised and either trained or equipped for the purpose of enabling them to be employed for the use or display of physical force in promoting a political object, namely to make hijrah to, and to fight jihad in, Afghanistan." - LIFE STYLE EXTRA (UK)