By Bruce Smith
A WEST Yorkshire man suspected to be the al-Qaeda chief behind the July 7 London bombings has been arrested in Zambia.
Haroon Rashid Aswat, who has been linked to radical Muslim cleric, Abu Hamza al-Masri, is reported to have flown out of Heathrow just hours before 56 people were killed and hundreds injured when blasts wrecked three tube trains and a London bus.
The news comes on the day that Edgware Road Tube station finally reopened, three weeks after suicide bomber Mohammed Sidique Khan, 30, blew up a Circle Line train there.
Aswat, believed to have lived in Batley until 10 years ago, is said to have entered the UK by ferry a fortnight before the first wave of bombings.
Searches of mobile phone records by British anti-terrorist police and secret service agents are understood to have found that he made numerous phone calls to the four suicide bombers.
Aswat is also understood to have possible links to the failed July 21 tube and bus bombings.
Scotland Yard are said to be heartened by the arrest which they see as a major breakthrough in the hunt for the network behind the bombings.
Family
It is believed that representatives of both British and American authorities are now in Zambia holding discussions over his possible extradition.
A Batley family confirmed they do have a son of the same name. They described him as an "angry young man" who they have had little contact with for 10 years. But they stressed they have no confirmation that their son is the same Haroon Rashid Aswat.
Today they said: "We are being asked about Haroon Rashid Aswat. He has not lived at this house and we have not had contact with him for many years.
"We ask the press to go away and we ask police to make sure our privacy is not invaded further."
One report said Aswat had left the UK to fight in Afghanistan and that the security services have been hunting him after he was accused of setting up an al-Qaeda training camp in the US.
Two years ago it was suspected Aswat had been killed in Afghanistan when his British passport was found on the body of a Taliban soldier.
But it was later revealed he had slipped into Pakistan where it is claimed he became a trusted associate of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
At least three of the July 7 bombers – Khan, 30, from Dewsbury, Hasib Hussain, 18, from Holbeck, and Shehzad Tanweer,22, from Beeston – visited Pakistan in the months before the attacks.
Aswat's telephone number is thought to have been found on Khan's mobile phone.
Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair has criticised West Midlands Police for using a Taser stun gun on a man suspected of the failed London bombings, saying it could have set off explosives.
Shooting Yasin Hassan Omar, who was arrested in a dawn raid on a Birmingham flat on Wednesday, with the Taser was an "incredible risk" because it could have detonated any bomb, he said.
Omar is being questioned over the failed bombing at Warren Street station on July 21.
Sir Ian said: "It was an incredible risk to use a Taser on a suicide bomber. A Taser sends electric currents into the body of somebody. If there is a bomb on that body, then the bomb can go off."
bruce.a.smith@ypn.co.uk