The failed bombing plots in the United Kingdom allegedly involving Indian doctors were carried out with the blessing of al Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, a media report said.
"It was an established fact from day 1 that al Qaeda was behind this and it was planned by its followers in Great Britain with bin Laden's blessings," The Times quoted a "foreign" intelligence source as saying.
British security officials were more guarded, saying that it was too early to say whether the plot was masterminded by some foreign hand or hatched in Britain.
"The warning an al Qaeda leader in Iraq delivered to Canon Andrew White, a British cleric working Baghdad, in April certainly suggested that he knew of the doctors plot," the source said.
White was reportedly told by the al Qaida leader, "Those who cure you will kill you."
Also, Bilal Abdulla, 27, the Iraqi doctor who allegedly helped to drive an automobile into the front of Glasgow airport last Saturday, disappeared for a year during his medical training in Baghdad, during which he is thought to have visited Pakistan or Lebanon, the report said.
A friend who attended the Medical College of Baghdad University with Abdulla told the newspaper that he was a religious fanatic, and that in 2001 or 2002 he mysteriously abandoned his studies for a year.
"There was some talk that he went outside Iraq to develop his religious culture. I heard that he went to Lebanon or Pakistan," the friend said.
On his return, Abdulla adopted a much more intense demeanour and isolated himself from his former friends. "He became more radical, but not to the degree that he took part in actual actions or clashes. He kept silent and became more isolated. He prayed and he kept himself away from the rest of the group," the friend told the paper.
Abdulla was born in Britain, where his father was working as a doctor, and has a British passport. His family returned to Baghdad when he was five. He showed religious leanings from an early age, attending Friday prayer each week and even sounding the call to prayer from his grand-father's mosque.
At medical school he fell in with "a group of radicals and extremists". They carried extremist thoughts, a friend who also went to the elite college told the paper.
"They had beards and talked about religion. He was against people wearing Western clothes and asked female doctors to put on a headscarf and gloves," the friend said.
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