What the British authorities specifically asked the Pakistani intelligence agency ISI to find out is how many more Muslim volunteers of Pakistani origin are present in the UK ready to carry out suicide bombings in public places for their cause. The death toll from the July 7 underground bus bombings in London rose Monday, July 18, to 56. The British authorities know that three of the four London suicide bombers visited Pakistan last year. Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shahzad Tanweer flew into Karachi together on Turkish Airlines and left three months later on 8 February, 2005. Hasib Hussain arrived in Karachi last July on Saudi Arabian Airlines. According to DEBKAfile’s special correspondent in Pakistan, British MI5 intelligence service also told Pakistani intelligence that the first two trained in explosives during their visit and were in contact with Osama Nazir, a member of the now outlawed militant outfit, the Jaish-e-Mohammad, which is led by Maulana Masood Azhar. After they landed at Karachi in 2004, the pair traveled to Lahore to attend a Sunni madrassa in the Catt district, then they moved to Faisalabad, where they lived with Osama Nazir at a small religious school in the city.
Nazir allegedly masterminded the March 2002 attack on a church in Islamabad’s high security diplomatic enclave, killing five people including an American diplomat’s wife and stepdaughter. He was also involved in the August 5, 2002 attack on the Murree Christian School, northeast of Islamabad, in which six Pakistani guards were killed, and the August 9, 2002 attack on the Christian Hospital chapel in Taxila, west of Islamabad. Four Pakistani nurses and one of the attackers were killed, while 26 people were wounded in Taxila attack.
During their stay at the Jamia Fatahul Rahermia -- the sources say, Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer were trained in the handling of explosives by Osama Nazir, who headed a group of 24 trained suicide bombers at that time. Sources in Islamabad told our correspondent that the two bombers were controlled by senior al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan after their return to the UK
Nazir was finally captured in Faisalabad on November 16, 2004, after Islamabad offered a two- million rupee reward for his arrest. His was the second important al Qaeda catch in Faisalabad in two years, after Abu Zubaida was arrested there in March 2002 and handed over to the American Federal Bureau of Investigation. In fresh interrogations carried out by Pakistani intelligence after the London bomb blasts, Nazir admitted having met Shehzad Tanweer in 2004. Osama has further claimed that Shehzad stayed with him at the Jumia for religious and spiritual inspiration from its head Qari Ahlullah Raheemi. When questioned, Nazir estimated that over 300 British Muslims of Pakistani origin have been to Pakistan since the 9/11 terror attacks, received training at Jaish-e-Mohammad and Harkatul Mujahideen camps and signed up with al-Qaeda for suicide missions.