Kafeel had links with Qaeda bomber: report

Kafeel Ahmed, the engineer from Bangalore, who allegedly drove a blazing jeep into the Glasgow airport, was allegedly radicalised by Hizb ut-Tahrir, the extremist group which the British government tried to ban two years ago, a media report said on Sunday.

Shiraz Maher, a former member, claimed that Ahmed came under the group's influence in 2004 while he was doing research at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, The Sunday Times reported.

Ahmed knew one of the terror group's most high-profile bomb makers in Europe, convict terrorist Abbas Boutrab, when he was planning to target airliners, The Observer reported quoting senior security sources.

Also, at least one of the suspects being quizzed over the alleged plots to set off car bombs in London and Glasgow, was recently in touch with the Osama-bin Laden's terror network in Iraq, media here reported .

Kafeel met Boutrab in Belfast while studying for a master's degree in aeronautical engineering at Queen's University between 2001 and 2004.

Boutrab was arrested in Belfast during 2003 and convicted two years later for downloading information on how to blow up an airliner. Algerian born Boutrab was jailed for six years.

A senior detective in Belfast told The Observer: "Boutrab headed up the cell that operated on the quiet both in Northern Ireland and the Republic. That cell included Kafeel Ahmed while he was a student at Queen's."

Suicide note?
The report also suggested that Kafeel had left a suicide note at his house. "A suicide note was found at the house near Glasgow where Kafeel had been staying since April," a security source was quoted as saying. The report could not be confirmed.