Two Indian doctors detained in connection with last week’s terrorist plots are
distant cousins who studied medicine together in the southern Indian city of
Bangalore and used to visit each other’s homes, The Times has learnt.
Mohammed Haneef, the doctor detained in Australia, also left his mobile
phone’s SIM card with Sabeel Ahmed, the physician detained in Liverpool,
when he left Britain in 2006, according to relatives.
Dr Haneef’s younger brother, Mohammed Shoaib, told The Times that they were
related to Dr Ahmed through their mother, who is the niece of Dr Ahmed’s
father.
The two men both began studying at the Ambedkar Medical College in 1998,
although Dr Ahmed did not graduate until 2003, a year later than Dr Haneef,
because he had to repeat a year.
Relatives said they used to visit each others’ homes in Bangalore
occasionally, but denied that they became roommates after moving to Britain
to work in the NHS.
Of the family relationship between the doctors in Australia and Liverpool, Mr
Shoaib said: "They were not that close. They never worked or lived
together in the UK."
However, other relatives said that Dr Haneef left his British mobile phone’s
SIM card with Dr Ahmed when he left Britain last year to take a job at the
Gold Coast Hospital in Queensland, Australia.
The latest link in the web of suspects came as the national terror threat
level was tonight reduced from critical to severe, which was the level
before last week's incidents, with Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, stating
that there was now "no intelligence" that an attack is expected
imminently.
Earlier, the
Prime Minister announced an urgent review of NHS recruitment after it
emerged that all of those arrested were either doctors or in related medical
jobs.
Detectives continue to question six people held at Paddington Green police
station in Central London. Five men, including Dr Haneef and Mr Ahmed, have
links to the health service either as doctors or trainee doctors, while the
sixth person, a woman, is a laboratory researcher.
Another doctor is being quizzed by officers in Australia while the eighth
person remains in a critical condition in hospital in Glasgow with severe
burns.
The families of Dr Haneef and Sabeel Ahmed -- both from Bangalore’s relatively
affluent middle class - protested their innocence today, denying that they
had any link to radical Islamist groups.
Worshippers at the mosque in Liverpool attended by Mr Ahmed, 26, also defended
him, describing him as a peace-loving young man looking for a wife.
Dr Haneef’s relatives and neighbours said he was a good Muslim who prayed five
times a day, wore a short beard, observed festivals and went to the mosque.
But he also enjoyed Hindi music and films, encouraged his wife and sister to
study and work, and loved living and working in the West, they added.
"He’s very innocent, humble and respectable - such a good person you
cannot imagine," said his younger sister, Sumayya.
"I am confident that he will be released with his dignity and honour
intact." She said that he had moved to Britain in March 2004 to do his
locums at the Halton Hospital near Liverpool.
While working there, he lived with other foreign doctors, including several
Indians, in a shared house they nicknamed the "haveli" - meaning
palace or large house in Hindi.
He spoke regularly with his family in India, but rarely discussed his friends
or colleagues and never appeared to be depressed, disillusioned or angry,
relatives said.
When he began work as a Senior House Officer at the Royal Liverpool Hospital,
he moved into hospital accommodation, they said. He came back to Bangalore
in November 2005 to get married, and returned to Britain with his wife.
His wife moved with him to Australia last year, but returned to Bangalore in
March so she could be with her family for the birth to her first child, who
was delivered on June 26.
Dr Haneef was planning to take a Singapore Airlines flight from Brisbane via
Kuala Lumpur to Bangalore on Tuesday to see his baby girl for the first
time, his relatives said.
They said he bought a single ticket because he wanted to obtain a passport for
his child and return to Australia with his family.
Dr Ahmed's mother, Zakia, told reporters in Bangalore that she had spoken with
her son by telephone briefly on Tuesday and that he was "keeping well".
"Both these boys are just caught in between," she said.
Worshippers at Mr Ahmed's mosque in Liverpool echoed her sentiments. One, a
general practitioner, who asked to remain anonymous, said the suspect had
been attending for over a year. "He would never do this kind of
terrorist action. He came here to pray," he said. "We are asking
God to release him as soon as possible and clear his name."
Meanwhile, Mr Brown told the House of Commons today in his first Question Time
as Prime Minister that there would be an "immediate review" of NHS
recruitment in light of the fact that all the suspects were doctors or
employed in the medical profession.
The Prime Minister added that background checks on skilled migrant workers
would be expanded, as would the worldwide "watch list" of
potential terrorists to help warn other countries.
Tonight, announcing that the national threat level had been reduced from
critical to severe, the Home Secretary, said: "There is no intelligence
to suggest that an attack is expected imminently."
However, she added: "The reduction of the threat level to severe does not
mean the overall threat has gone away - there remains a serious and real
threat against the United Kingdom and I would again ask that the public
remain vigilant."
Yesterday Canon Andrew White, a British cleric working in Baghdad, claimed an
alleged al-Qaeda leader from Iraq gave him a chilling warning of the
attacks.
Canon White told The Times that the terror leader warned him that his group
was planning an attack, and said: 'those who cure you will kill you,' in an
apparent reference to the NHS link.
Time limits: questioning suspects
Police can hold the six suspects, five men and one woman, at Paddington Green
until the weekend. Then they either have to charge them, let them go or
apply to a magistrate to hold them for another seven days.
When that week comes to an end if they want to hold them further, up to a
maximum of 28 days, they have to apply to a High Court judge.
For the suspect seriously ill in hospital under police guard it is not clear
if police will have to release him after 28 days, even if they have not been
able to question him.
