DOCUMENTS found inside a flat that was raided last week by police looking for terrorists show that two of the occupants had been trained by extremist Palestinian groups. They included a would-be suicide bomber who had fled to Britain.

The documents were found by Sunday Times reporters in two briefcases that had been left by police forensic teams which searched the house in Willesden Green, northwest London. Among the papers was a picture of a man dressed in military fatigues cradling an AK-47 assault rifle and letters written on notepaper headed “Al Quds Brigade”, a Middle East terror group.

They included a copy of a statement sent to the Home Office by a failed asylum seeker claiming he had trained as a suicide bomber with the radical group Hamas.

One wall of the four-room ground-floor flat was decorated with a picture of the Palestinian flag topped with barbed wire.

The Metropolitan police refused to say yesterday why the documents had been left behind in their series of high-profile raids on Tuesday against suspected Al-Qaeda terrorists at addresses across Britain.

However, the discovery that a self-confessed suicide bomb trainee is still in Britain, despite being refused asylum more than a year ago, will cause concern. The man claimed to have fled the Middle East after refusing to co-operate with terrorists, but the Home Office rejected his story.

Other documents showed that a 27-year-old occupant of the flat had admitted to the Home Office that he had been trained to use weapons by a Palestinian militant group. He said he was shot at by members of a rival group but his asylum application was refused last July because the Home Office found his claims “implausible”.

Neighbours of the nondescript flat said that it was frequently used by groups of men of Middle Eastern and Asian appearance.

The shabby four rooms, including a combined kitchen,sitting room and bedroom, showed signs yesterday of having been thoroughly searched by police but the two briefcases filled with documents were left on the bedroom floor.

Yesterday police continued to question 11 men held at Paddington Green police station, including three arrested in north London. Police have until today to decide whether to charge or release them.

American authorities say that Al-Qaeda’s senior representative in Britain is among those being held, although police refused to confirm reports that Eisa al-Hindi was one of those arrested.

It is possible that the Palestinian asylum seekers identified in the briefcase documents were not the target of the police raid. Instead they could have been inadvertently caught up in the trawl for the top Al-Qaeda suspect.

Some US officials say that the arrest of al-Hindi is the most significant breakthrough in the war on terror since the capture last August of Hambali, the man blamed for the Bali bombings, and the arrest in March 2003 of Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the September 11 attacks and a senior aide to Osama Bin Laden.

Al-Hindi — one of several aliases — is claimed to have planned attacks on Heathrow airport, the New York stock exchange and other prominent US financial institutions.

As events unfolded last week his true identity remained a mystery. The Sunday Times has, however, spoken to a former business acquaintance who identified him as an Indian-born former clerk in a train operating company who was originally named Patel.

Born in 1971, his family moved to Britain when he was young and he grew up in Middlesex. He also worked as a security guard and a taxi driver. He converted to Islam at the age of 20 before going to fight in Kashmir.

He wrote a terrorist training manual which included graphic details of ambushes and beheadings. One source said: “His publisher didn’t believe him at first because he seemed such a tame sort of guy.”

About 5ft 5in tall and with spectacles, he is said to be mild-mannered and unassuming.

He was recruited to Al-Qaeda at an Afghan training camp by Khaled Sheikh Mohammed and was sent to southeast Asia to be trained in terrorist warfare by Hambali.

In 2001 al-Hindi was dispatched to the United States to lead a three-man team carrying out reconnaissance for attacks on financial institutions which would have rivalled the magnitude of September 11 if they had been carried out. He returned to Britain later that year.

Last week the police refused to confirm the claims about al-Hindi and his Al-Qaeda links.

Neither would they comment on the discovery of the documents by The Sunday Times.

“We are not prepared to discuss what material has been seized or not been seized in connection with the inquiry,” a police spokesman said.

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