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As British police and intelligence officials descend on a prison cell in Islamabad to interview a London-born "holy warrior," the Pakistan connection is emerging as the key to this month's London bombings.
The young man in the Islamabad prison is Zeeshan Siddiqui, arrested by Pakistani police in April after they tracked him in contact with some leading al-Qaida personnel, including its supposed No. 3 in the hierarchy, Abu Faraj al-Libbi, now in U.S. custody.
Siddiqui was supposed to be small fry, except for one intriguing connection. At Britain's Cranford community college, he was best friends with another young British-born Pakistani, Asif Hanif, who killed himself as a suicide bomber on an Israeli nightclub two years ago.
And then among the names that Siddiqui let slip under interrogation in Pakistan were Shehzad Tanweer, whom he had met, and Mohamed Sidique Khan, both now infamous as two of the London Underground suicide bombers. And Israeli security sources were cited in a report in the Israeli paper Ma'ariv that Khan had also been involved in the planning of the Israeli attack.
Khan, Tanweer and the third British-born Pakistani of the London bombings, Hasib Hussain, had all visited Pakistan earlier this year.
5 Pakistanis Sought in Egypt Terror Probe
SHARM EL-SHEIK, Egypt - Police said Monday they were searching for five Pakistani men in their widening investigation into Egypt's deadliest terror attack, which killed scores of people, including an American, at this Red Sea resort.
...Police at checkpoints around this resort also were circulating photographs of five Pakistanis who apparently were among a group of nine Pakistanis who arrived in Sharm el-Sheik from Cairo on July 5, according to two investigators who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the probe's sensitivity.
However, President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan is no friend to the Islamofascists, who have tried to assassinate him multiple times:
Musharraf has increasingly become a target for Islamic militant groups since he turned against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and sided with the United States after the 11 September terror attacks on New York and Washington in 2001.
It would be great if Musharraf was offering an explanation of what appears to be involvement by people in Pakistan with the recent London and Cairo bombings, but that's not what we have yet:
Al-Qaeda 'destroyed in Pakistan'
Pakistan says its troops have al-Qaeda on the run
Pakistan has destroyed al-Qaeda's ability to operate on its soil, President Pervez Musharraf has said.
He said the network could not have orchestrated deadly bombings in London, Egypt or elsewhere from his country.
"Al-Qaeda does not exist in Pakistan any more," he told reporters in Lahore, after unconfirmed reports Pakistanis were being sought over bombs in Egypt.
Yet it appears that some kind of organized support for the terrorists is going on in Pakistan.
...It emerged that two of the four suicide bombers, both Britons of Pakistani descent, flew into Karachi last year.
What they did for three months has not been established but security officials want to know if they met militants or attended religious schools where they might have been radicalised.
Last week, Gen Musharraf defended a recently launched crackdown against extremists but also said Britain must do more to tackle its own militancy threat.
On Monday, he promised that those arrested for publishing hate material or misusing mosque loudspeakers would be tried in anti-terrorism courts.
So what exactly is the deal? Stay tuned.
