An Iraqi doctor who was arrested at Glasgow airport after the Jeep he was riding in rammed into a terminal building was charged tonight with conspiring to cause explosions.

Bilal Abdullah, 27, is due to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court today charged with conspiring to cause explosions in London on June 29 and in Glasgow the following day.

Dr Abdullah, who trained in Iraq and lived in Cambridge between 2001 and 2004, was working at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley before the attacks.

He was arrested at Glasgow airport last Saturday with Kafeel Ahmed, who is still receiving treatment in hospital for severe burns. It was confirmed today that Mr Ahmed, who police believe may be the London and Glasgow bombmaker, is a doctor of engineering, not medicine.

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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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BACKGROUND

• Biting back at terror suspects

• MI5 asked to check foreign medical workers

• Search for the thread linking bomb suspects

• Mobile phones may have led police to arrests

Mr Ahmed, who allegedly drove the Jeep Cherokee into the airport terminal, appears to have the right technical background for constructing the type of fuel-air explosive devices found in three vehicles, two of them in London.

Mr Ahmed, a 28-year-old Indian previously thought to be called Khalid Ahmed, has a master of philosophy (MPhil) degree in aeronautical engineering and a doctorate in computational fluid dynamics, a highly specialised subject in which computers are used to simulate the flow of fluids and gases over complex structures, such as the outside of vehicles or aircraft. The bombs recovered from London and Glasgow were of the same design, consisting of gas cylinders, petrol and detonators using mobile phones.

According to reports in India, Mr Ahmed told his family in Bangalore just before he left for Britain in May that he was working on “a large-scale confidential project” about global warming and that he could not give them any details.

A report in The Times of India said that he told his family: “It involves a lot of travelling. The project has to be started in the United Kingdom. Various people from various countries are involved in this.”

On June 30, the day after two car bombs were discovered in the West End and defused, Mr Ahmed rang to tell his family in Bangalore that his “earlier presentation failed”, and asked them to pray for him, according to the report. The next day he is alleged to have driven the Jeep into the terminal at Glasgow.

Mr Ahmed, who is suffering from 90 per cent burns after setting himself alight in the impact, was transferred today from the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley to a specialist burns unit at Glasgow Royal Infirmary. He remains unconscious and is, technically, not under arrest but under close police guard.

In Australia, police executed search warrants aross the country and questioned four more Indian doctors who had previously worked for the NHS. Police chiefs said that links to the UK were “becoming more concrete”, as detectives began inspecting 31,000 computer files seized in raids in Perth and the mining town of Kalgoorlie, Western Australia.

Further inquiries were being made about Mohammad Haneef, a 27-year-old doctor arrested by Australian police in Brisbane this week, who was being interviewed today by a senior British detective. He studied medicine in Bangalore and is a cousin of Kafeel Ahmed.

Accounts of Mr Ahmed’s background in India reveal that his parents, Maqbool and Zakia Ahmed, are both retired professors from Bangalore Medical College. His younger brother, Sabeel, who is also a doctor, is one of the six suspects arrested in Britain after the two failed bomb plots and is now being held at Paddington Green police station.

Kafeel Ahmed specialised in physics, chemistry, mathematics and biology before going to university at a college in Davanagere, about 300 miles (480km) northwest of Bangalore, where he obtained a degree in engineering seven years ago. He was described as a brilliant student. He is believed to have transferred to Queen’s University, Belfast, to do his MPhil in aeronautical engineering, which he completed in 2003.

Jamal Iweida, of Belfast’s Islamic Centre, who knew him when he was at the university, said he remembered a “pleasant and calm person”.

Mr Ahmed got his doctorate in computational fluid dynamics at Anglia Polytechnic University, renamed Anglia Ruskin University, which has campuses in Cambridge and Chelmsford. He is still registered as a doctorate student there and has a functioning university e-mail address. The university said that it was aware of speculation about one of its students, and it was co-operating with the police.

— More than 120 victims injured in the July 7, 2005 bombings are still waiting for full compensation. The Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority has not yet resolved a fifth of claims. Thelma Stober, who lost her leg in the explosion on the Circle Line train at Aldgate, said: “We are the forgotten people.”

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