U.K. police hunt for London car bomb plotters

LONDON - Police mounted increased patrols in a jittery London Saturday as detectives conducted an intense hunt for a man seen running from an explosives-packed car in the heart of the city’s entertainment district as well as two other men suspected of involvement.

The three men have been identified and are believed to be from the Birmingham area, a center of radical Islamic unrest in Britain, U.S. officials who had been briefed on the developments told NBC News.

Two Mercedes loaded with gasoline, gas canisters and nails were found abandoned Friday in what police believe was an attempt to kill scores or even hundreds of people. Detectives said they were keeping an open mind about the perpetrators, but terrorism experts said the signs pointed to an al-Qaida-linked or inspired cell.

Scotland Yard would not comment on a report by ABC News in the United States that police had a “crystal clear” picture of one suspect from CCTV footage.

Forensics experts were searching the two cars for clues. One was abandoned outside a nightclub in Haymarket, a busy street of shops, clubs and restaurants just yards from Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus.

The other was towed after being parked illegally in nearby Cockspur Street and was discovered in an impound lot about a mile away in Park Lane, near Hyde Park.

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, the Metropolitan Police anti-terrorism chief, said the two devices could have caused “significant injury or loss of life.”

“The discovery of what appears to be a second bomb is obviously troubling, and reinforces the need for the public to be alert,” he said.

Details from cell phone
Authorities told NBC News that police had learned a great deal from a cell phone found in the first bomb-rigged car, which recorded incoming and outgoing phone numbers. In addition, they were trawling through footage from the scores of high-resolution closed-circuit television cameras that record nearly everything that happens across the city.

Metropolitan Police via AP Authorities told NBC News that one of the three men sought for questioning could be an associate of Dhiren Bharot, who was sentenced to life in prison last year for plotting to blow up financial institutions in the United States and Britain.

Police did not name the three men they were seeking, but they said the men were believed to be from the Birmingham area, home to Britain’s second-largest Muslim population and a strong recruiting base for the controversial Muslim group Hizb ut-Tahrir, or the Party of Liberation.

They said one of the three men could be an associate of Dhiren Bharot, an Indian convert to Islam who was sentenced to life in prison last year for plotting to fill limousines with explosives similar to those found Friday and park them in garages beneath hotels and office complexes.

Bharot, whom police described as a high-level al-Qaida operative, also planned to attack five financial landmarks in the United States: the New York Stock Exchange and the Citigroup Tower in New York; the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, both in Washington; and the Prudential Building in Newark, N.J.

'Where the Next Bomb?'
The plot rattled London a week before the second anniversary of the July 7 suicide bombings that killed 52 commuters on the city’s transit system, and two days after Prime Minister Gordon Brown took office.

“London on the Edge” said the front page headline in The Independent newspaper on Saturday, while the Daily Mail asked, “Where’s the Next Bomb?”

Brown urged people to be alert, saying Britain faced “a serious and continuous security threat.”

The Times newspaper reported that police had distributed a document to nightclubs two weeks ago warning of the threat from “vehicle-borne explosive devices” — car bombs. The document, prepared by the National Counterterrorism Security Office, took the form of general counterterrorism advice for British clubs.

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