London bombers were linked to Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba

Bomber met Islamabad church bomber in 2003-intelligence source

Fri Jul 15, 2005 12:41 PM BST

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - One of the London suicide bombers met in 2003 with a man later arrested for bombing a church in the Pakistani capital, intelligence sources said on Friday.

Pakistani security agencies are investigating possible links between militant groups based in Pakistan and Shehzad Tanweer, a Briton of ethnic-Pakistani origin who was one of four bombers in the July 7 London attack that killed 53 people.

One of the groups being checked is Jaish-e-Mohammad (Army of Mohammad), linked to al Qaeda and banned by Pakistan in 2002.

The other group is Lashkar-e-Taiba, which like Jaish has a record of fighting in Indian Kashmir, but unlike Jaish has a reputation for tight discipline and is not known to have any operational ties with al Qaeda.

One Pakistani intelligence source said Tanweer visited Pakistan in 2003 and 2004.

During the first visit, the source said, Tanweer met Osama Nazir, who was arrested last December for the 2002 bombing of a church in Islamabad that killed two Americans among others.

"He met Osama Nazir in a mosque in Faisalabad," an intelligence official said. Tanweer's family comes from Faisalabad, a city in eastern Pakistan.

Nazir was a member of Jaish, and security agents called in Jaish supremo Maulana Azhar Masood on Thursday for questioning.

"So far all leads are heading towards Jaish-e-Mohammad," an intelligence official said.

British-born Islamic militant Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, now under sentence of death for the murder of U.S. reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002, was also believed to be a member of Jaish.

Another intelligence official said Tanweer, 22, had made a second visit to Pakistan in late 2004 and had stayed in the city of Lahore from December until last February, during which he visited several mosques and madrassahs, or religious schools.

One madrassah was in Muridke, on the outskirts of Lahore, and the home of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, a hardline Islamic charity organisation made up of cadres of Lashkar-e-Taiba.

"We are looking into whether Tanweer had any links with these people," the second intelligence official said.

President Pervez Musharraf has promised Prime Minister Tony Blair that Pakistan will provide "fullest support and assistance" in the investigations into last week's bombings.