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UK police hold five over Tel Aviv bombing

Pa News
Saturday 03 May 2003 00:00 BST

Five people were arrested under the terrorism act in connection with a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv earlier this week, police said today.

Two men and two women were arrested in Derbyshire and a woman was held in Nottinghamshire, a Scotland Yard spokeswoman said.

She said: "Officers from the Metropolitan Police anti-terrorism branch, working with local officers, arrested five people in a series of operations in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire as part of ongoing inquiries being carried out following a terrorist incident in Tel Aviv on Wednesday."

All five were arrested yesterday under section 41 of the Terrorism Act 2000 which relates to those suspected of being involved in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.

They were all being taken into custody at central London police stations.

Police were searching addresses in the area. No weapons or any explosive devices are believed to have been found.

The arrests follow a joint British and Israeli security services operation to establish how a British Muslim became a suicide bomber.

Israeli police claim Asif Mohammed Hanif, 21, of Hounslow, west London, detonated a device in the doorway of Mike's Place, a bar in Tel Aviv, in the early hours of Wednesday, killing three other people.

Authorities are still hunting for his 27-year-old accomplice, Omar Khan Sharif, from Derby, who is alleged to have fled the scene of the bombing after his device failed to detonate.

Israeli police were following up dozens of calls from people who reported spotting Sharif after he fled the scene. Pictures of his passport photo were handed out in streets and shopping centres.

Israeli security forces are working with Britain's Special Branch and the Metropolitan Police's SO13 anti-terrorist branch to track down Sharif.

Meanwhile, the UK bank accounts of two British Muslims accused of a suicide bomb attack in Israel were frozen on the instructions of Chancellor Gordon Brown, the Treasury said.

The Chancellor said in a statement last night: "We must remain constantly vigilant in all areas in bearing down on terrorism and the sources that finance it.

"We have taken immediate action today to ensure that no UK funds belonging to those suspected of being responsible for this atrocity can be used to support terrorism."

Hanif and Sharif are believed to have entered Israel separately before travelling to the Gaza Strip through the heavily-guarded Erez border crossing.

It has been claimed the men said they were were travelling with the Alternative Tourism Group, a church related organisation and tourism agency, as they crossed the military checkpoint.

But ATG denied having any contact with the men.

Peace activists opposed to Israel's presence in the occupied territories also distanced themselves from the pair following claims that the bombers had tried to use their organisation to pose as human shield campaigners.

The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) said Hanif and Sharif had never attempted to infiltrate the group despite attending a memorial service last week for one its members, American "human shield" campaigner Rachel Corrie.

The flower-laying service was held at the site of her death in the highly volatile area of Rafah, along the Egyptian border, where she was crushed by an Israeli bulldozer in March.

Tom Wallace of ISM said: "One of our members said he thinks they were there", but he added: "There is no connection. They never tried to infiltrate ISM."

The attack took place just hours before the publication of the "road map" outlining plans for a peace settlement in the Middle East and a Palestinian state by 2005.

Meanwhile, in London, outspoken cleric Abu Hamza claimed Hanif and Sharif were victims of a Jewish plot to destabilise the peace process.

"All of this is a fabrication, a plot against Muslims," he told more than 150 worshippers outside Finsbury Park Mosque in north London.

Hanif is thought to be the first Briton to have carried out a suicide bomb attack.

A student of Arabic at Damascus University, he had travelled to Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia "to explore his culture", friends said.

The bombing was claimed as a joint operation by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, an armed offshoot of Yassir Arafat's Fatah movement, and the armed wing of Hamas, the hard-line Islamic group.

The move to freeze the bombers' accounts is just the latest in a campaign by the Government to clamp down on terrorist funding.

In October last year the Government published a report which revealed that over 100 organisations and 200 individuals had been placed on sanctions lists and had any assets frozen.

A Treasury spokeswoman said the Chancellor could instruct the Bank of England to freeze assets "where there are reasonable grounds suspecting involvement in terrorism".

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