The man arrested in the US for allegedly trying to blow up a trans-Atlantic airliner using explosives in his shoe is a small-time British criminal who converted to Islam while in jail, the London Times reported yesterday.
The report said Mr Richard Reid (28) could be linked with Osama bin Laden after the investigators discovered that the man was a worshipper at a London mosque which is also attended by one of the suspected conspirators in the September 11th attacks.
Mr Abdul Haqq Baker, chairman of the mosque which Mr Reid attended, told the Times that Mr Reid was incapable of acting alone and was probably on a test mission for a new terrorist technique.
Mr Baker, leader of the Brixton Mosque in south-west London, also said in a separate BBC radio interview: "He was a sort of tester to see if this would succeed."
Mr Reid boarded an American Airlines Boeing 767 flight from Paris to Miami on Saturday, and was overpowered by fellow passengers as he reportedly tried to detonate explosives in his shoes.
Mr Reid, a mixed-race Briton whose father is Jamaican and mother English, was identified after his fingerprints were sent by the FBI to British police, the Times said.
Born in Bromley, south-east London, in 1973, Mr Reid has a string of convictions for street crimes, and is believed to have served time in various prisons.
According to the newspaper, his fellow worshipper at one time at Brixton Mosque was Mr Zacarias Moussaoui (33), a French national of Moroccan descent, who is charged in the US with conspiracy in connection with the September 11th attacks.
Federal prosecutors say Mr Moussaoui, who has been in custody since August 16th, engaged in the same preparation and training for murder as the 19 co-conspirators who carried out the US hijackings. British authorities confirmed on Tuesday that the bomb suspect named by the Times as Mr Reid had British nationality - but gave no further information.
The chief terror suspect, Osama bin Laden, has accused the West of "loathing Islam" in a new video message broadcast yesterday by the Qatari-based satellite television station, Al-Jazeera.
Bin Laden said he wanted to review "the fierce crusade against Islam, two months after it was launched", hinting that the tape was recorded around December 7th.