EON

New Delhi  – Inflammatory speeches by al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and propaganda against the United States and Britain have been seized by police from the house of a British terror plot suspect in the southern Indian city of Bangalore, a news report said Tuesday.

The material was found in three CDs that were seized along with a computer hard disk from the house of Kafeel Ahmed, who is suspected of being the person who drove a flaming vehicle into Glasgow airport, the Times of India newspaper reported.

While Kafeel Ahmed is in a hospital in Glasgow with burn injuries over 90 per cent of his body, his brother Sabeel Ahmed is being detained by the British police. Their cousin Mohammed Haneef is being questioned by the police in Brisbane, Australia.

The Times of India also quoted investigators as saying that Kafeel Ahmed’s mother Zakia Khan had feared that her son was straying down a wrong path.

“I suspected him to be taking a wrong path, but I had no idea exactly what he was up to. I still can’t imagine he did something of this magnitude,” she was quoted as saying by the police.

Kafeel Ahmed allegedly carried out the failed attack at Glasgow airport along with Iraqi doctor Bilal Abdullah and the two were also believed to have driven two Mercedes “bomb cars” to central London a day earlier. Those were discovered and defused.

Zakia Khan and her husband live in India’s information technology hub Bangalore, capital of southern India’s Karnataka state. Both their sons studied in colleges in the state before leaving for higher degrees in Britain and Ireland.

Kafeel, 28 is an aeronautical engineer, while Sabeel, 27, is a doctor.

Kafeel Ahmed worked in the Bangalore office of Indian outsourcing major Infotech Enterprises between December 2005 and July 2006, reports said.

Infotech provides development support to several aircraft manufacturers including Boeing and Airbus and its clients include the British Home Office.

Karnataka Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy is scheduled to chair a meeting of senior officials from the state home and police departments Tuesday to discuss the information gathered by the police and intelligence departments on the two brothers and their cousin in Australia.

A senior Australian police official is also expected to arrive in Bangalore as part of the probe against Haneef.

The Times of India quoted police sources as saying that Kafeel Ahmed and his associates were believed to have visited Pakistan more than once to seeek approval for the Britain terror plot.

The police also suspect that al-Qaeda operatives have been at work in India recruiting young people.

“Al-Qaeda operatives have infiltrated the country in a big way and are acting as sleeper cells, spreading messages brainwashing youths. They have a long-term, methodical plan. It will not be long before these sympathisers turn operatives,” an official of Karnataka Police’s anti-terrorist cell was quoted as saying.

The official said al-Qaeda was targetting young educated Muslims who could be sent to the United States and Europe for terrorist activities.

He said al-Qaeda sleeper cells attempted to spread hatred through e-mails, MMS, SMS and video and audio clips with incendiary speeches, images of armed militants and torture of Muslims.

Some of the images being circulated include that of militants riding tanks and firing in the air, of bin Laden firing a gun, pictures of the 9/11 attack in New York and pictures of an American soldier slitting the throat of an Iraqi man and then severing his head.