A 'martyrdom video' apparently recorded by a suspected suicide bomber was found at one of the addresses raided by the British police even as the interrogation of 24 terrorist suspects, linked to the plot to blow up US-bound flights from London, continued.
Two dozen people were being questioned at Paddington Green high security police station in West London, police said on Friday.
Majority of those taken into custody are understood to be young British Asian men of Pakistani descent, many holding dual nationality. But residents in areas where the arrests took place identified at least one man who they
said was a white British convert to Islam.
The alleged ringleaders have been under surveillance since last year, security sources said. The plot, which at first was considered too far-fetched, had echoes of an al-Qaeda plan, codenamed Bojinka, and discovered in the Philippines in the mid-1990s to use explosives in bottles in attacks on aircraft, a report in The Times newspaper said on Friday.
Reports from Pakistani intelligence, suggesting direct involvement of senior Kashmiri militants linked to the al-Qaeda, convinced British intelligence that the plot had to be taken seriously, The Times said. Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch was brought in to the operation last December.