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| Europe |
| The real target was Rome |
| 2005-07-31 |
| THE second London bomb attack wasn't botched: It was merely 'a demonstration'. That's what the man named as the fourth bomber in the 21 Jul attacks, Osman Hussain, told the Italian police after he was arrested in Rome on Friday night. That has led the authorities there to believe that the real target for a second round of devastation was a European capital aside from London. Newspapers across Italy yesterday published an apparent confession that the 27-year-old gave to the Italian police. Click to see larger image 'We wanted to stage an attack, but only as a demonstration,' several newspapers quoted Osman as telling interrogators. The Il Messaggero newspaper quoted the police as saying that Osman could have been in Rome to set up a terrorist attack there. The Corriere della Sera newspaper reported that two maps of the Paris Metro system were found in the apartment where he was arrested. However, Osman claimed he was in Rome only 'because I didn't know where else to go'. 'I have friends here and could find a place to stay. I would have stayed here for a while and then gone elsewhere. I don't know of any plan to attack Italy,' he was quoted as telling the police in the La Repubblica newspaper. The La Stampa newspaper quoted him as saying that he knew nothing about the overall plan for the London attacks. He was simply handed a backpack and told to board a train with it, he said. No paper indicated how it had received the transcript. The interrogation was conducted in Italian, which Osman speaks fluently. (See report at right). According to British media reports, Osman took a train from England through the Channel Tunnel to Paris, then boarded another train to northern Italy, where he tried to seek refuge with relatives. The crucial breakthrough in tracking him down was his use of a British handphone registered to his brother-in-law, which was easily traced, reported the Daily Mail newspaper. The phone was used in the Waterloo Station area of London on Monday, then went silent. It was used again in Paris on Wednesday, and then again in Milan and Bologna on Thursday. By then, the police in Rome had begun a round-the-clock surveillance of Osman's brother, who owns a handphone shop there, and his father, who lives in the northern Italian city of Brescia. On Friday, they trailed Osman's brother home to his comfortable apartment in a middle-class eastern suburb. Minutes later, they saw Osman leave the building to pray at a small mosque nearby. He was arrested upon his return. The police carried out more than 15 other searches across Italy in a bid to flush out people it suspects of helping Osman evade arrest. Among those detailed was an official from Tunisia. 'It has been possible to identify a dense network of individuals belonging to the Eritrean and Ethiopian communities in Italy who are believed to have helped him cover his tracks,' Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu told the Lower House of Parliament yesterday. Osman is expected to be returned to Britain within days under a new fast-track extradition law, reported the Press Association. It said the British police have asked for him to be handed over under a European Arrest Warrant, a legal procedure that came into effect in Italy last Thursday. INTERROGATORS were surprised to find that Osman Hussain was fluent in Italian, reported the newspapers in the country. They had assumed he was a British citizen born in Somalia, an east African country that was once a British protectorate. But Italian newspapers reported that he was actually born in Ethiopia, a neighbouring country that was invaded and ruled by Italy in 1930s. They also reported that he had spent five years living in Rome after entering the country on a false passport as a teenager and claiming asylum. According to the reports, Osman's real name is Hamdi Isaac. His brother in Rome goes by the name of Remzi Isaac, reported the Corriere della Sera newspaper. While Remzi settled in Rome and opened a handphone store, his brother moved to England and took up British citizenship. Osman was the last of the four alleged bombers in the 21 Jul attacks to be arrested. He is accused of being the man who tried to blow up Shepherd's Bush station. The other three were detained during raids on homes in Birmingham on Wednesday and London earlier on Friday. The four suspects in the earlier 7 July attacks, which killed 52 commuters and maimed more than 700, are all believed to have died in the blasts. The police have not confirmed media reports that a 'fifth bomber' in the 21 Jul attacks, who dumped an unexploded device in a west London park, had also been arrested. They have also not commented on how Osman managed to slip out of Britain five days after the failed attacks, despite a huge manhunt and his photograph being issued to officials at all ports and airports. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #3 It was an international sorta proving grounds for awhile |
| Posted by: Shipman 2005-07-31 23:09 |
| #2 Part of it was. Somalia is actally the amalgamation of Italian and British Somalilands. Al |
| Posted by: Frozen Al 2005-07-31 23:04 |
| #1 I thought Somalia was invaded by the Italians as well. |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2005-07-31 13:26 |