Police made a "possible explosives" discovery at the home of suspected suicide bomber Yasin Hassan Omar yesterday as the hunt continued for the men behind the July 21st bombing attempt on London's transport network.
Five people arrested in connection with the attack remained in custody last night, although none of them is believed to be among the bombers. As police sources repeated they had no reason to believe the four, possibly five, would-be suicide-bombers had left the country, London mayor Ken Livingstone said: "There's a real risk they will have gone straight to a safe house and just be locked up, perhaps with a lot of supplies there."
Meanwhile it emerged that one of the suspects, Muktar Said Ibrahim (27), was given British citizenship less than a year ago. Ibrahim arrived in the UK as a refugee with other asylum seekers from Eritrea in east Africa at the age of 14. In November 2003 he applied to become a British citizen and was given his passport in September.
This news - coupled with the disclosure that another of the suspects, Yasin Hassin Omar (24), had been resident in the UK for more than 10 years - will revive questions about the extent to which Britain's "home-grown" terrorists may have been "radicalised" at home rather than abroad.
Police remained at the 12-storey block of flats where Omar lived in New Southgate last night, after earlier discovering "a large amount" of "possibly" explosive material. Police believe an underground car park attached to the flats could have been used to store bomb-making materials. It was reported that materials which could have been used for bombs had also been found in rubbish chutes and dustbins inside the building.
Police have linked Omar to the attack on a Victoria line tube train between Warren Street and Oxford Circus last Thursday. Omar is understood to be a Somali who arrived in Britain aged 11 in 1992 and was granted indefinite leave to remain in the UK in May 2000.
Metropolitan police commissioner Sir Ian Blair last night backed proposals for the extension of time permitted to detain terror suspects, by way of a process of judicial renewal of the presently permitted 14-day period, up to three months.
Sir Ian also said there had been 250 incidents since the attacks when police thought they may have been dealing with a suicide bomber. And he indicated that on seven occasions police had been on the brink of acting.