MATT ROURKE / Associated Press
The Market Street building housing offices of the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates. Two doctors accused in the plot reportedly contacted the group about U.S. jobs.
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Britons on edge; new details emerge
Born in Britain but raised in Iraq, Abdullah was known for strict Muslim views at Cambridge University. Shiraz Maher, himself a former member of a radical Islamic group, said he remembered Abdullah berating a Muslim roommate for not being devout enough, showing him a video of a beheading and warning that that could happen to him.
Contact staff writer John Shiffman at 215-854-2658 or jshiffman@phillynews.com.
"He was certainly very angry about what was happening in Iraq," Maher told BBC television. ". . . He supported the insurgency in Iraq. He actively cheered the deaths of British and American troops in Iraq."
It was in Cambridge that Abdullah is believed to have come to know Asha, who was born in Saudi Arabia and is of Palestinian descent, when Asha worked at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge.
Details have emerged to show that Abdullah seems to be the key connection among the suspects arrested in the terror plot. He reportedly had links to radical Islamic groups known to the MI5 security service, British security officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The Times of London reported that Abdullah and Ahmed had written an apparent suicide note explaining their motives.
MI5, Britain's domestic intelligence agency, said on its Web site that some Britons had joined the insurgency in Iraq.
"In the longer term," it said, "it is possible that they may later return to the U.K. and consider mounting attacks here."
Goldman Sachs Threatened
The FBI is investigating anonymous mailed threats against the Goldman Sachs investment firm but does not consider the warnings to be of "high credibility," an investigator said yesterday.
The letters, handwritten in red ink on loose-leaf paper and signed "A.Q.U.S.A.," were mailed to 20 newspapers, authorities said. The letters contained the warning: "Hundreds will die. We are inside.
You cannot stop us."
A Goldman Sachs Group Inc. spokesman said the firm was working with law-enforcement authorities, adding that authorities told the firm they did not believe the threat was credible.
The letters, postmarked in late June from the New York boroughs of Queens and the Bronx, were being analyzed by FBI and U.S. postal inspectors at the FBI crime lab in Washington, and at the Postal Service lab in Dulles, Va.
The letters were sent to newspapers across the country. The Star-Ledger
of Newark, N.J., is the largest newspaper to
have received one of
the letters.
Goldman Sachs is based
in New York, and has offices in London, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Hong Kong and other cities. About 3,000 people work in its 44-story Jersey City, N.J., tower.
- Associated Press
Contact staff writer John Shiffman at 215-854-2658 or jshiffman@phillynews.com.
