British bombers: Al Qaeda in Iraq

The Brits are getting more and more sure that Al Qaeda in Iraq was directing the terror attacks against them.

CBS/AP) British intelligence services increasingly believe that the failed car bombings in London and Glasgow bare the fingerprints of al Qaeda in Iraq, CBS News has learned.

Intelligence sources tell CBS News that the people behind the attempts were directly recruited by Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, the present leader of the terror group’s Iraq franchise.

[…] Sources tell CBS News that al-Muhajir recruited the men between 2004 and 2005, while they were living in the Middle East, upon orders from then-al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Al-Muhajir was told to recruit young men who could easily move into Western countries, assimilate and lay low until the time came to attack. Britain has a fast-track visa program for medical students which makes it easier for them to enter the country.

[…] Authorities identified Bilal Abdulla, an Iraqi doctor who worked at the Glasgow hospital, as the other man arrested at the airport.

According to the British General Medical Council’s register, a man named Bilal Talal Abdul Samad Abdulla was registered in 2004 and trained in Baghdad. Staff at the Glasgow hospital said Abdulla was a diabetes specialist.

Britain’s The Independent and The Muslim News newspapers reported that a man arrested in Liverpool late Saturday was a 26-year-old doctor from Bangalore, India, who worked at Halton Hospital in Cheshire, northern England. Police would not immediately comment on the reports.

The Muslim News also said the Indian doctor had used the car, cell phone and Internet account of a fellow physician who had moved from England to Australia around a year ago. It said police had asked friends of the Indian for details about the man who went to Australia.

Of course, this is going to feed into the “It’s all Britain’s fault” theory, but the fact of the matter is, Al Qaeda in Iraq is an offshoot of Al Qaeda. The good news is that it’s not nearly as easy for them to create car bombs in a civilized nation as it is to make them in Iraq. The better news is they didn’t train their terrorists well enough to construct working bombs.

Six doctors have been arrested so far in the plot. So much for the “oppressed poor” who have no other choice but to blow themselves up.