2 Suspects in London Attacks Identified

Police disclosed the names of two fugitives Monday who are wanted on suspicion of trying to bomb a bus and subway train last week and stormed an apartment in a North London housing project where neighbors said they had frequently seen the two men.

Scotland Yard’s announcement indicated that police were making some progress as they raced to prevent further attacks in a city on edge, but they appealed again for the public’s help in finding four would-be bombers who remained at large. Investigators believe the plot, in which bombs carried onto three Underground trains and a bus failed to fully explode, was a follow-up to a July 7 strike that killed 52 people.

The developments seemed to reinforce the theory that Thursday’s failed bombings were carried out by a cell that included suspects with African backgrounds.

Police raided an apartment about 2 a.m. Monday that they linked to the suspect they believe tried to bomb a double-decker bus.

Later in the day, Scotland Yard identified the suspect as Muktar Said Ibrahim, 27, also known as Muktar Mohamed Said. Just before the attempted bombing, a security camera on the bus captured an image of Said wearing a baseball-style cap, a T-shirt with a palm-tree motif, and a dark jacket, police said. Police also provided a second picture of him that they said came from an identity document.

Police named the second assailant as Yasin Hassan Omar, 24. He is a dark-skinned man who wore a blue shirt when he was filmed from above by a security camera shortly before he tried to detonate a knapsack bomb on a subway train near the Warren Street Station, police said.

Police did not reveal the men’s nationalities or other details.

Said “was associated with and has recently visited” the apartment building in North London that police stormed early Monday, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke said.

But as children and curious residents milled outside the public housing complex later in the day, a woman and her daughter said they recognized Said and Omar from photographs released by authorities.

The fugitives either lived in or regularly visited a unit on the top floor of the Curtis House tenement during the last two years, said neighbor Sammy Jones, 33. The apartment tower is one of four boxy, run-down buildings tucked next to a laminated-flooring warehouse in an otherwise upscale neighborhood.

Jones and her 14-year-old daughter, Leanna, who live on the third floor, described Omar as Somali and Said as a heavy-set man with Indian features and short, curly hair. She said that of four men they saw going to the top-floor apartment, Said was the only one to wear traditional attire.

“He used to wear a white cloth on his head,” she said.

Two others, whom she described as a Somali and a Jamaican or African named George, lived in the apartment, Jones said. The group used to come and go at all hours and did not appear to have jobs, she said. About three or four weeks ago, she added, she watched the men carry about 50 heavy boxes into the building elevator from a car.

“I asked, ‘What you doing?’ ” Jones said. “They said it was wallpaper stripper. I didn’t think anything of it.”

Jones, a homemaker, said she immediately recognized Omar from the photos released by police. She said she wasn’t sure it was Said until she saw the new photo Monday of the suspect police say tried to bomb the bus.

“I didn’t recognize [him] until they showed a clear photo on the telly,” she said.

Said often left the complex between 8 and 9 p.m. to catch a bus heading in the direction of the Wood Green shopping district about a mile away, an area offering a mix of trendy shops and kabob restaurants, Jones said. Said and “George” would greet neighbors cheerfully, she said.

“They were quite friendly blokes,” Jones said.

Omar and the other Somali were much more reserved, often giving neighbors only a silent nod, Jones and her daughter said.

The profile of the group seems consistent with an investigation that has focused on suspects with apparent ties to Africa, particularly Somalia and Ethiopia, although it is not clear whether they are immigrants or native Britons.

Three men, one described as being of Ethiopian descent, were arrested over the weekend in South London, a largely African and Afro-Caribbean area. The three are being held under anti-terrorism laws.

In the deadly July 7 attacks, three of the suicide bombers and several suspects allegedly involved in the plot were middle-class Pakistani Britons living in northern England. The fourth dead bomber was a Jamaican convert to Islam living north of London. Police suspect that the July 7 plot and last week’s were linked by contacts among the Britain-based suspects and by a larger network overseen in Pakistan.

A British anti-terrorism official said Pakistani leaders had collaborated in previous plots with operatives of East African or Afro-Caribbean descent.

“I’ve often seen East African and Caribbean extremists as considerably more vulnerable to persuasion by recruiters,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “They have tended in past cases to be less educated, with weaker family ties, sometimes with criminal records. Often [they are] converts to Islam in prison.”

Investigators have established that the two groups used backpacks and similar explosives and that they chose a similar mix and geographic spread of targets. The crucial point remains determining if and how an international network assembled a plot involving at least two cells with different backgrounds and geographical bases, the official said.

“It means somebody is able to orchestrate two separate but related groups,” the British official said. “One mostly African, one mostly British Pakistani with a Jamaican convert. Why were they separate? Why did they mix? Did they know each other?”

The two groups may have been connected by Haroon Rashid Aswat, a British Muslim of Indian descent wanted in the United States and Britain. Authorities suspect Aswat played a coordinating role in the July 7 blasts. He is from the same community as the suspected leader of the suicide bombers and allegedly was in telephone contact with all four.

Investigators say Aswat was also close to Abu Hamza al Masri, the Egypt-born imam of the Finsbury Park mosque in northeast London, a bastion of radicalism that has brought together Arab, African and South Asian extremists who went on to participate in terrorist plots. Abu Hamza is in prison facing terrorism charges here and in the U.S.

Aswat’s whereabouts remain unclear. Some Pakistani officials say that he was arrested last week in Pakistan, and other sources say he is in custody elsewhere.

Police arrested two more men in North London on Monday, but a Scotland Yard official said the arrests did not appear to be important.

In addition, police offered a more precise picture of the attackers’ movements during Thursday’s attempted bombings.

Just before 12:25 p.m., Omar, Said and a young man wearing a black sweatshirt with “New York” on the front entered the Stockwell Underground station in South London, Clarke said. The station is within a mile or two of the residences where the three arrests were made over the weekend.

The Stockwell Station was apparently a launch point for the plotters, just as the King’s Cross Station was for the four bombers on July 7.

From Stockwell, Omar took a northbound Victoria Line train and tried to set off a bomb concealed in a small, purple knapsack near the Warren Street Station, where he was seen about 12:40 p.m. as he vaulted a ticket barrier and fled, authorities said.

Said, police say, took a train northeast to the Bank area. At 12:53 p.m., he caught a No. 26 bus and sat near the back with a gray-and-black knapsack beside him, Clarke said. After a small explosion that blew out an upper-level window but injured no one, Said got off the bus on Hackney Road about 1:05 p.m., Clarke said.

The police have concluded that the third man tried to set off his bomb soon after leaving Stockwell. The failed explosion occurred shortly before 12:35 p.m. as the train approached Oval Station. A camera recorded a striking image of the athletic-looking young man with close-cropped hair sprinting down a corridor.

“The train stopped at Oval Station, and he was then chased from the station by extraordinarily brave members of the public who tried to detain him,” Clarke said. The suspect escaped and discarded his New York sweatshirt.

The fourth attacker approached his target from a separate station northwest of Stockwell. He set off his bomb near the Shepherd’s Bush Station about 12:25 p.m., police said. The partial detonation left him prone and dazed on the floor of the train, according to witness accounts. Clarke said the assailant probably escaped by climbing through a window, then ran down the tracks and fled through backyards.

Not far from that scene, police found a fifth backpack bomb that appeared to have been abandoned in bushes, Clarke said. The discovery has raised speculation that a fifth would-be bomber lost his nerve, but a Scotland Yard official insisted Monday: “We are looking for four bombers at this time.”

The police said the bombs were packed into plastic food containers inside dark backpacks or sports bags.

Clarke displayed a container of the same brand, describing it as manufactured in India, exported to Britain by only one company and sold in about 100 outlets around the country. He asked for the public’s help in tracking the clue.

Anti-terrorism officials around Europe think the fugitives will probably remain in hiding in Britain and could attempt another assault.

In the last major attack in Europe before July 7, the Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people in March 2004, the attackers had assembled a cache of money, guns and explosives. When police trapped seven assailants in a hide-out, the fugitives set off an explosion that immolated all of them and killed a SWAT officer.