GLASGOW, Scotland – As the investigation over two failed car bombings in Britain continues, the FBI revealed that two suspects had contacted a U.S. clearinghouse for foreign doctors within a year of the attack.
Mohammed Asha and another unnamed suspect both contacted the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates in Philadelphia. FBI spokeswoman Nancy O’Dowd believes Asha was applying for certification but never actually took the test for foreign medical graduates.
On June 29, authorities deactivated two car bombs set to explode near crowded nightclubs and pubs in central London. Only a day later, two men drove a Jeep piled with gas canisters into an airport terminal in Glasgow. Police arrested both men, later identified as Bilal Abdulla and Khalid Ahmed. Before the attack, Ahmed worked as a Lebanese physician at Glasgow’s Royal Alexandra Hospital.
So far authorities have imprisoned eight suspects for the two incidents, six Middle Easterners and two Indian nationals.
British courts also sentenced Omar Altimimi, an immigrant from the Netherlands, to nine years in prison for acting as a sleeper agent, according to Judge David Maddison. On the other side of the globe, Australian police seized computers in two hospitals to investigate possible ties between the British terrorists and Muhammad Haneef, an Indian doctor authorities had arrested.
