DNA test confirms Kafeel drove Glasgow jeep
BANGALORE: DNA testing by the U.K. authorities has confirmed that the man who drove the flaming jeep into the Glasgow Airport terminal on June 30 was indeed Kafeel Ahmed from Bangalore, the elder brother of Sabeel Ahmed who has also been detained in Liverpool for his suspected role in the attack.
Highly placed sources in the police here told The Hindu on Saturday that the DNA samples of Kafeel, who has suffered serious burns, had matched that of Sabeel.
(According to PTI, the parents of Kafeel Ahmed told the police on Saturday that it was their son who drove a jeep into Glasgow airport.
“They said it was Kafeel,” an officer of the police investigation team said. City Police Commissioner N. Achutha Rao had earlier said the parents had not made such an admission anytime during questioning.)
Central intelligence agencies on Friday communicated this information to the Bangalore police, who are investigating the Karnataka angle to the London-Glasgow terror plot, the sources said.
According to information available with the police here, Kafeel had left his bag and baggage at Sabeel’s house a few days before the attack, and this apparently led to the latter’s detention.
The Bangalore police have detained for interrogation a “well educated” local youth with whom the two brothers had close contacts. Kafeel and Sabeel had met the youth several times during their recent visit to Bangalore, the sources said.
Officials of the Cyber Crime Police Station were deciphering information from the hard disk of a computer that was seized from Kafeel’s house.
Kafeel had sent several e-mails from the computer during their stay here, it has been revealed.
On suspicion that Kafeel had pumped in huge sums from the U.K. to his family here, the police are probing the financial details of his parents, Dr. Zakia Ahmed and Dr. Maqbool Ahmed, who had worked in West Asia for nearly 15 years.
The police are making similar enquiries in regard to the family of another Bangalore doctor, Mohammed Haneef, who continued to remain detained in Brisbane, the sources said.
Was car-bomb designed in Bangalore?
NEW DELHI: Kafeel Ahmed, the engineer from Bangalore who crashed a car-bomb into the Glasgow airport terminal with only limited success on June 30, began researching bomb-making techniques just weeks before travelling to the United Kingdom on May 5 to complete his doctoral work, intelligence sources told The Hindu.
Records of Ahmed’s online activity establish that he had extensively researched bomb design in March, the sources said. Soon after travelling to the U.K., he acquired the components used to assemble the explosive devices fitted inside two Mercedes-Benz cars that were intended to explode in central London last month. A similar device, using cellphone-activated detonators and propane cylinders, was used in the Glasgow attack. If the investigators have got it right, these findings suggest that Ahmed acted without training or material assistance from major terrorist groups. Police in Bangalore have so far found no link between Ahmed and major terrorist groups such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Harkat ul-Mujahideen. Nor have counter-terrorism authorities in the U.K. found evidence that the Glasgow cell was linked to Al-Qaeda’s top command structure.
Ahmed went to the U.K. to complete his doctoral work in computation fluid dynamics – the study of the movement of fluids and gases over complex structures, like aircraft. He had a Master of Philosophy degree in aeronautical engineering from Belfast’s Queen’s University. But his doctoral work was delayed as he refused to take a study loan on the ground that it was against his religious principles.
Investigators believe that Ahmed, and Bilal Abdullah, the second man in the Glasgow airport car-bomb incident, planned the attacks after they attended Islamist gatherings in Cambridge, U.K. Having trained in Iraq, Abdullah worked in Cambridge between 2001 and 2004. He is thought to have known Ahmed’s brother, Sabeel Ahmed, a Liverpool-based doctor who has also been arrested.
Police in Bangalore expect to have the opportunity eventually to question Ahmed on his links in the city if he survives. Although he suffered 90 per cent burns after his jeep crashed into protective barriers at the Glasgow airport, experts say there is still a small chance he could survive his injuries. Ahmed was moved from a critical care facility at the Royal Alexandra Hospital to the Glasgow Infirmary’s specialist burns unit on Friday.
So far investigators have found nothing specific to suggest that Ahmed was linked to any terror groups in Bangalore. However, his connections in the local Jamaat Ahl-e-Hadis, a neoconservative religious faction from which the Lashkar draws much of its cadre, have opened the possibility that he may have information to offer on the terror group’s networks in Bangalore.
BANGALORE: DNA testing by the U.K. authorities has confirmed that the man who drove the flaming jeep into the Glasgow Airport terminal on June 30 was indeed Kafeel Ahmed from Bangalore, the elder brother of Sabeel Ahmed who has also been detained in Liverpool for his suspected role in the attack.
Highly placed sources in the police here told The Hindu on Saturday that the DNA samples of Kafeel, who has suffered serious burns, had matched that of Sabeel.
(According to PTI, the parents of Kafeel Ahmed told the police on Saturday that it was their son who drove a jeep into Glasgow airport.
“They said it was Kafeel,” an officer of the police investigation team said. City Police Commissioner N. Achutha Rao had earlier said the parents had not made such an admission anytime during questioning.)
Central intelligence agencies on Friday communicated this information to the Bangalore police, who are investigating the Karnataka angle to the London-Glasgow terror plot, the sources said.
According to information available with the police here, Kafeel had left his bag and baggage at Sabeel’s house a few days before the attack, and this apparently led to the latter’s detention.
The Bangalore police have detained for interrogation a “well educated” local youth with whom the two brothers had close contacts. Kafeel and Sabeel had met the youth several times during their recent visit to Bangalore, the sources said.
Officials of the Cyber Crime Police Station were deciphering information from the hard disk of a computer that was seized from Kafeel’s house.
Kafeel had sent several e-mails from the computer during their stay here, it has been revealed.
On suspicion that Kafeel had pumped in huge sums from the U.K. to his family here, the police are probing the financial details of his parents, Dr. Zakia Ahmed and Dr. Maqbool Ahmed, who had worked in West Asia for nearly 15 years.
The police are making similar enquiries in regard to the family of another Bangalore doctor, Mohammed Haneef, who continued to remain detained in Brisbane, the sources said.
Was car-bomb designed in Bangalore?
NEW DELHI: Kafeel Ahmed, the engineer from Bangalore who crashed a car-bomb into the Glasgow airport terminal with only limited success on June 30, began researching bomb-making techniques just weeks before travelling to the United Kingdom on May 5 to complete his doctoral work, intelligence sources told The Hindu.
Records of Ahmed’s online activity establish that he had extensively researched bomb design in March, the sources said. Soon after travelling to the U.K., he acquired the components used to assemble the explosive devices fitted inside two Mercedes-Benz cars that were intended to explode in central London last month. A similar device, using cellphone-activated detonators and propane cylinders, was used in the Glasgow attack. If the investigators have got it right, these findings suggest that Ahmed acted without training or material assistance from major terrorist groups. Police in Bangalore have so far found no link between Ahmed and major terrorist groups such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Harkat ul-Mujahideen. Nor have counter-terrorism authorities in the U.K. found evidence that the Glasgow cell was linked to Al-Qaeda’s top command structure.
Ahmed went to the U.K. to complete his doctoral work in computation fluid dynamics – the study of the movement of fluids and gases over complex structures, like aircraft. He had a Master of Philosophy degree in aeronautical engineering from Belfast’s Queen’s University. But his doctoral work was delayed as he refused to take a study loan on the ground that it was against his religious principles.
Investigators believe that Ahmed, and Bilal Abdullah, the second man in the Glasgow airport car-bomb incident, planned the attacks after they attended Islamist gatherings in Cambridge, U.K. Having trained in Iraq, Abdullah worked in Cambridge between 2001 and 2004. He is thought to have known Ahmed’s brother, Sabeel Ahmed, a Liverpool-based doctor who has also been arrested.
Police in Bangalore expect to have the opportunity eventually to question Ahmed on his links in the city if he survives. Although he suffered 90 per cent burns after his jeep crashed into protective barriers at the Glasgow airport, experts say there is still a small chance he could survive his injuries. Ahmed was moved from a critical care facility at the Royal Alexandra Hospital to the Glasgow Infirmary’s specialist burns unit on Friday.
So far investigators have found nothing specific to suggest that Ahmed was linked to any terror groups in Bangalore. However, his connections in the local Jamaat Ahl-e-Hadis, a neoconservative religious faction from which the Lashkar draws much of its cadre, have opened the possibility that he may have information to offer on the terror group’s networks in Bangalore.
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