London terror controller trained in US, known to intelligence agencies

[spooked911]

also linked to Al Qaeda

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,22989-1702411,00.html

"Haroon Rashid Aswat has emerged as the figure that Scotland Yard have been hunting since he flew out of Britain just hours before the attacks which killed 56 people.

Aswat, 30, who is believed to come from the same West Yorkshire town as one of the bombers, arrived in Britain a fortnight before the attacks to orchestrate final planning for the atrocity. He spoke to the suicide team on his mobile phone a few hours before the four men blew themselves up and killed fifty-two other people.

Intelligence sources told The Times that during his stay Aswat visited the home towns of all four bombers as well as selecting targets in London.

Aswat has been known to Western intelligence services for more than three years after the FBI accused him of trying to set up al-Qaeda training camps in the US. When he was arrested in a madrassa (religious school), Aswat is understood to have been posing as a businessmen and using a false name. He was picked up in a raid at a madrassa at Sargodha, 90 miles from Islamabad, by Pakistani intelligence officials and flown to a jail in the capital."
snip
"FBI documents obtained by The Times reveal details of how a London-based cleric sent Aswat to America in 1999 to set up camps in Oregon for US-born recruits. The papers indicate that Aswat spent three months in America and engaged in firearms and poisons training but decided against using a remote ranch in Bly as an al-Qaeda camp. The CIA is keeping in close touch with Aswat’s interrogation and British detectives are seeking permission to speak to him."

So WHY on earth wasn't the MI5 and MI6 tracking this guy?????

Or if they were, why didn't they stop the plot?

[jojo54]

1. "London terror controller trained in US"

That's Homeland Security for ya! :sarcasm: :rofl:

[spooked911]

2. But how could "intelligence agencies" not know what this guy was up to?

I don't buy the incompetence theory.