An al-Qaeda leader in Iraq boasted before last week’s failed bombings in London and Glasgow that his group was planning to attack British targets and that “those who cure you will kill you”, The Times has learnt.

The warning was delivered to Canon Andrew White, a senior British cleric working in Baghdad, and could be highly significant as the eight Muslims arrested in the wake of the failed plot are all members of the medical profession.

Canon White told The Times that he had passed the general warning, but not the specific words, to a senior official at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in mid-April. A Foreign Office spokesman said last night that it was forwarding the actual words to the Metropolitan Police.

The Times also learnt yesterday that one of the suspects, the Iraqi doctor Bilal Abdulla, had links to radical Islamic groups, and that several of the eight suspects have now been linked to known extremist radicals listed on MI5’s data base. Canon White, who runs Baghdad’s only Anglican parish, said that he met the al-Qaeda leader on the fringes of a meeting about religious reconciliation held in Amman, the Jordanian capital.

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Eight suspects have been held by anti-terror police investigating the failed car bomb attacks in Glasgow and London

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“He talked to me about how they were going to destroy British and Americans. He told me that the plans were already made and they would soon be destroying the British. He said the people who cure you would kill you.”

The man, who was in his forties and had travelled from Syria for the meeting, said that the plans would come to fruition in the next few weeks and target the British first. He said that the British and Americans were being targeted because of their actions in Iraq. He did not learn the man’s identity until after the meeting, and will not disclose it now, but said: “I met the Devil that day.”

Separately, intelligence sources told The Times that Bilal Abdulla, 27, the Iraqi doctor involved in the Jeep attack last Saturday on Glasgow airport, had links to radical Islamic groups and was plotting a terrorist attack. They said that Dr Abdulla had met Mohammed Asha, 26, the Jordanian doctor arrested near Sandbach on Saturday night, through their fathers, who were friends. The two young doctors kept in touch after they came to Britain two or three years ago.

The eight suspects are all young, Muslim and connected to the medical profession. But they come from Jordan, Iraq, other Middle Eastern countries and India, and before now there had been no clue as to how they met in this country. The last of the eight suspects to be arrested was named as Mohammed Haneef, 27, an Indian doctor working in Australia. He was taken into custody as he waited to make a one-way journey to India at Brisbane international airport on Monday night.

Australian police were also questioning Dr Haneef’s friend Mohammed Asif Ali, another Indian Muslim and fellow doctor. Both men had worked in hospitals in Liverpool before moving to Australia within a month of each other last autumn.

Two other Asian men were arrested in Blackburn yesterday after two deliveries of gas canisters to an industrial estate in the town. The men are being held at a police station in Lancashire on suspicion of offences under the Terrorism Act 2000, but police said it was too early to say whether the arrests were connected to the London and Glasgow attacks.

Police sources said that they believed they had now apprehended all the main suspects behind those attacks. The three Scottish suspects — Dr Abdulla and two men of Middle Eastern origin arrested at the Royal Alexandra Hospital near Glasgow on Sunday night — were moved yesterday to Paddington Green police station in West London. There they joined Dr Asha, his wife Marwa, and Dr Sabeel Ahmed, 26, who was arrested in Liverpool on Saturday. Security sources said they believed Dr Abdulla and Dr Khalid Ahmed, named yesterday as the man who drove the Jeep into Glasgow airport, were also responsible for the failed car bombings in London on Friday. Dr Ahmed, believed to be the brother of Sabeel, has not been officially arrested as he is critically ill in the Royal Alexandra Hospital with 90 per cent burns.

Several of the suspects have now been linked to known extremist radicals listed on MI5’s data base. Security sources told The Times that none of them had been under surveillance as part of any counter-terrorist operation. The security sources said that although a number of the suspected plotters did feature on the data base, it was only in connection with general extremist activities.

Meanwhile, a suspect bag sparked a security alert at Heathrow Terminal 4. The departure lounge was evacuated so that passengers could be security checked for a second time. All European departures were cancelled.

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