(source)Egypt chemist 'not bomb suspect'

Si è mosso addirittura il ministro:

An Egyptian chemist detained in Cairo has been cleared of any links with the London bomb attacks, officials say. An interior ministry report "made clear there was no link between Magdi al-Nashar and al-Qaeda or the bombings", a government spokesman said. British police have not formally named Mr Nashar as a suspect in their investigation. The 33-year-old, who was arrested last week, has denied having any role in the attacks that left 56 people dead. On Saturday, the Egyptian interior minister said that reports linking Mr -Nashar to al-Qaeda were "groundless" and based on a hasty conclusion.

In custody

Mr Nashar, who completed a PhD in chemistry at Leeds University, was arrested in Cairo as part of the inquiry into the 7 July bombings. He is reported to have admitted knowing one of the bombers, Hasib Hussain, and helping to arrange the rental of a flat in which traces of explosives were found. Mr Nashar told Egyptian investigators that he had intended to return to Leeds at the end of a holiday in Egypt, which began a week before the bombings.

Ancora...

EL NASHAR: I CHALLENGE YOU TO FIND BOMB LINKS

THE bio-chemist arrested after the London terror blasts yesterday said he had known one of the bombers, but challenged police to link him to the crime.

Egyptian Magdy el Nashar, currently held in Cairo, denied involvement in the blasts during an interview attended by British police.

The 33-year-old helped to arrange the lease of a flat in Leeds used by the bombers and was thought to have been a friend of Jermaine Lindsay.

But yesterday he insisted he only knew bus bomber Hasib Hussain - and had no knowledge of his plans.

The divorced dad-of-one said: "He asked me for help in finding shelter in Leeds. I set up a place for him in the house of an Iraqi doctor. I never visited the house and did not plan, finance, assist or manufacture explosives.

"The British authorities found my name because it was in the phone book of Hasib Hussain."

He added: "I challenge the authorities to prove my involvement in this crime or my knowledge of it. I condemn the explosions."

Yesterday, it was believed Egyptian authorities were preparing to release him.

Britain has no power to request he is sent to London because there is no extradition treaty with Egypt.

El Nashar was brought up in a Cairo slum but won a scholarship to study for a PhD at Leeds University.

He said he met Hussain through the university mosque - but had no idea what he was planning.

The devout Muslim also denied his faith linked him to the London terror attacks.

He said: "This is not a basis for the British authorities to connect me to these crimes.

"I pray faithfully, but that does not mean I am a religious fundamentalist."

El Nashar, who returned to Egypt a week before the bombings, said he had only been back home once before due to financial reasons - but there was nothing to stop him returning to Britain.

Friends said he was here to register his PhD at Egypt's National Research Centre.

He was arrested after leaving prayers at the mosque next to his parents' home in Basateen district.

His case has been taken up by Egyptian lawyer Montasser el Zayat, famous for representing members of an Islamic terrorist group.

Magdy el-Nashar Frame Up Crumbling

Maybe the Brits can get Magdy Mahmoud Mustafa el-Nashar, the supposed London bombing chemist, on downloading illegal music files. You'd think an al-Qaeda bomber would have all kinds of incriminating data on his computer. But all the Egyptians found was a hard-drive filled with music. No bomb recipes. No secret al-Qaeda communications or incriminating emails. Maybe the Brits should turn the case over to the Recording Industry Association of America or its European equivalent. Since el-Nashar does not seem to be guilty of anything, maybe he can be nailed on violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. It wasn't long ago a music pirate in Brooklyn was sentenced to a year of supervised parole for selling music he did not own. Maybe el-Nashar can be convicted in a similar fashion since he seems to have absolutely nothing to do with terrorism.

You'd think an al-Qaeda chemist would melt into the woodwork after preparing bombs responsible for killing over fifty people. But no. Magdy el-Nashar went to Egypt a week before the attacks and promptly applied to his employer, the Egyptian National Research Center, for permission to return to Britain, according to the Financial Times. Either el-Nashar is an extremely stupid terrorist (and professional chemical engineers are not usually stupid) or he has absolutely nothing to do with the attacks.

Moreover, if el-Hashar is indeed an al-Qaeda bomb-maker, he made a big mistake when he left his possessions in the rented apartment in Leeds. "He said he had come back to Egypt for a month-and-a-half holiday and was planning to go back to Britain to resume his studies and that all his belongings are still in his flat in Leeds," Mahmoud al-Fishawi, head of the Egyptian information department at the Ministry of Interior, told Arab News. It also does not look good that el-Nashar allowed himself to be captured at his family's home outside of Cairo. If you were an al-Qaeda chemist responsible for killing innocents, wouldn't you be in hiding somewhere? Instead of disappearing, el-Nashar was looking for a wife. All of this is an immense headache for the Brits. Obviously, the frame-up is not going as planned.

And then there is a small problem with the Egyptian authorities who are resisting el-Nashar's extradition and also claim he has nothing to do with al-Qaeda. "Egyptian officials announced earlier today the 33 year old Magdy al-Nashar arrested for allegedly producing the bombs used in last week's explosions in British capital London, has no links with the terrorist organization al-Qaeda," reports Zaman Online. "Egyptian Interior Minister Habib al-Adli told the newspaper al-Cumhuriyya that all claims linking al-Nashar with al-Qaeda were baseless."

Regardless of the fact the only suspect not blown to bits in the explosions appears to be innocent and the Brits are jumping through flaming hoops in an effort to frame him (at least the nine eleven al-Qaedaites had the good sense to kill themselves), this will not stop the grim-visaged British Home Secretary Charles Clarke from proposing a bevy of new "anti-terrorism" laws.

One such proposed law will make it a punishable offense to "glorify terror attacks." Of course, it will be up to the state to decide exactly what "glorification" is (and, considering all the "evil ideology" blather emanating from the poodle-as if locked in a Manichean sweepstakes contest with Dubya the Destroyer-we can assume glorification will be any manner of speech that does not excoriate terrorism to the satisfaction of the state).

In fact, for Clarke and the sprawling Brit snoop agencies, it will soon be Christmas with gifts tucked under the tree: Clarke wants permission to compel telecommunication firms to store phone and internet records for intelligence use, saying the data would be vital to connect the dots of terror networks. "They are saying they want access to records as preventive measures, which means you'd need access before the event. That really means surveillance," mused one rocket scientist on the USA Today site. Surveillance and the Big Brother state is of course what it is all about. Any number of Muslims are expendable-that is if they can be properly framed.

Ma il divertimento non finisce qui:

UK boy wrongly labelled as bomber

Evidence showing that all three of the London bombers of Pakistani descent visited Pakistan last year has been thrown into doubt.

Che botta di sfortuna.

A photograph of a passport purporting to show bomber Hasib Hussain was in fact that of a 16-year-old British boy with the same name.

E questi idioti ci dovrebbero difendere dal terrorismo.

The photo, together with documentation showing two other bombers visited Pakistan, was published on Monday.

Pakistan, meanwhile, says it has made no arrests over the London bombs.

'I was terrified'

The passport details supposedly of the bomber Hasib Hussain are actually those of a teenage boy living in High Wycombe, approximately 30 miles (50km) north-west of London.

On Monday Pakistan's Federal Immigration Agency (FIA) said that Hasib Hussain, carrying a British passport number, arrived in the port city of Karachi from Riyadh in Saudi Arabia on 15 July 2004.

Photographs of the passport were published in Pakistan and then around the world.

However, the 16-year-old at the heart of the confusion has now been interviewed at his High Wycombe home by Pakistani TV station ARY.

"I first saw my photograph on Channel 4 [news] and I was terrified," the boy told ARY.

"I didn't want people looking at me saying, hey, you are supposed to be dead," he told ARY, "or someone saying that there goes the London bomber."

His father told ARY that the family had indeed arrived in Karachi from Saudi Arabia. He appealed for British and Pakistani authorities to clear up the confusion.

When contacted by the BBC News website the FIA said: "We have nothing to say on the matter at this stage."

Reports denied

According to the other information released by Pakistan on Monday, the bombers Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer arrived and left Pakistan together and spent three months in the country.

The three bombers were among the 56 people killed in the London blasts.

Police have confirmed they were the UK's first suicide bombings.

The fourth bomber was a Jamaican-born Briton, Germaine Lindsay, 19.

More than 200 people in Pakistan have been arrested in recent days in a clampdown called by President Pervez Musharraf.

But the authorities are denying reports that a British Muslim al-Qaeda suspect, Haroon Rashid Aswad, is among them.

Lo spasso continua:

Bomb 'mastermind' was victim of name confusion

A man widely reported to have slipped into Britain to "mastermind" the London bombings was an innocent Pakistani who happened to have a similar name to a suspected al-Qa'ida leader.

The man, in his 30s, was the subject of intense media speculation surrounding his visit to the UK, which culminated in him flying out of London the day before the attacks. His presence in the country, apparently unmonitored, led to criticism of MI5.

However, The Independent has learnt that the man had no role in the attacks. Inquiries in the past week have discovered that the man was an innocent Pakistani traveller who had a similar name to an al-Qa'ida terrorist who was on a watch list of several foreign security agencies.

A similar mix-up is understood to be behind the claims by US intelligence that Germaine Lindsay, 19, the bomber who carried out the King's Cross attack, was on a British watch list. This was because the "fourth" bomber was wrongly identified in the United States as Lindsay Jermaine - someone with a similar name to a terrorist suspect.

Scotland Yard is concentrating on establishing the movements of the four bombers from Leeds and Aylesbury, and what explosives they used.

Sniffer dogs are being used on the Tube to detect explosives. Dozens of dogs will be deployed throughout the London Underground system and the police may also introduce random checks using metal and bomb detectors on the Underground.

* Police have until Saturday to continue questioning a 29-year-old man arrested in West Yorkshire last week in connection with the bombings. He is the only person to have been arrested so far in Britain over the attacks.

Ricordate George Reid? "Most interesting recent news is that Israeli government officials have now admitted that Reid traveled to Israel for "around 10 days" in July, then moved to to Amsterdam, where he worked as a dishwasher at several restaurants between August and November."

La storia si ripete, perché nessuno l'ascolta:

London bomber visited Israel - Israeli official

E' ridicolo.

JERUSALEM, July 18 (Reuters) - One of the suspected bombers in the London attacks visited Israel in 2003, an Israeli government official said on Monday, bolstering a news report the British-born Muslim helped plan a Tel Aviv suicide bombing.

Li fanno entrare col tappeto rosso, i terroristi islamici.

The official said Mohammad Sidique Khan, who police believe blew himself up on an underground train in London on July 7, arrived in Israel on Feb. 19, 2003, and left the next day. The official declined to speculate on reasons for the visit.

Israeli daily Maariv said on Sunday that Khan was suspected of helping plan a pro-Palestinian suicide bombing by two fellow Britons of Pakistani descent on April 30, 2003. Three Israelis were killed in the attack on Mike's Place bar in Tel Aviv.

But Israeli security sources played down the report, which cited no proof. "This is not a concrete finding," a source said on Sunday.

British police named Khan as a member of a cell that killed 55 people in the bombings in London.

Pakistani immigration officials told Reuters on Monday that Khan, 31, and two other cell members visited Karachi last year.

One of the suspects, Shehzad Tanweer, visited madrasas, or Muslim religious schools, in Pakistan, the sources said.

Israeli officials are under orders from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon not to draw links between the London attacks and Palestinian militants.

After al Qaeda's September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, Sharon was quick to draw parallels to Israel's own struggle against Islamic militants who have spearheaded a Palestinian uprising since 2000.

Hamas, an Islamic movement sworn to Israel's destruction, issued a joint claim of responsibility for Mike's Place bar along with al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed wing of the dominant Palestinian political faction Fatah.

Asaf Hanif, a Briton of Pakistani descent, blew himself up at the bar, but his comrade Omar Sharif fled after apparently failing to detonate his bomb. Sharif's body was found in the sea a week later. Investigators concluded he had drowned.

Un'altra botta di sfortuna.

L'avventura continua:

London Bomber Helped Terrorists Bomb Tel Aviv Bar