Probe continues in London bombing investigation

LONDON -- Britain's government rejected criticism that lax policies toward Muslim political refugees helped facilitate terror recruiters, while police Sunday searched an Islamic bookstore in the northern city of Leeds, hometown of three of the London suicide bombers.\nAs the investigation continued into the July 7 mass-transit terror attacks, a newspaper reported that Britain's domestic secret service, MI5, had scrutinized one of the four suspected bombers in 2004 but did not regard him as a threat to national security or put him under surveillance.\nMI5 began evaluating Mohammad Sidique Khan, 30, during an inquiry focused on an alleged plot to explode a large truck bomb outside a London target believed to be a nightclub in the Soho neighborhood, The Sunday Times reported. The inquiry evaluated hundreds of potential suspects, the newspaper said.\nPolice declined to comment on the report, as did a spokesman for Prime Minister Tony Blair's office.\nThe bombings, which killed 55 people on three underground trains and a double-decker bus, have prompted the government to propose new legislation outlawing "indirect incitement" of terrorism -- including the praising of those who carry out attacks.\nBut Charles Falconer, the Secretary for Constitutional Affairs and Lord Chancellor, dismissed a suggestion that the government had been lax in its policies toward political refugees from Muslim countries, thereby helping to make Britain a fertile recruiting ground for Islamic terrorism.\n"In terms of asylum, our policy is: If you are in fear of persecution, you are entitled to come here," the minister said Sunday on British Broadcasting Corp. television. "Obviously, if you then seek to attack the very state that you come to, that gives rise to different questions.\n"But I don't think we have been ultraliberal. ... What we have got to do now is unify all the forces in our society, in particular in the Muslim community, against those people who are fundamentally at odds with our values."\nThree of the four suspected suicide bombers were born in Britain to parents of Pakistani origin: Khan; Shahzad Tanweer, 22; and 18-year-old Hasib Hussain, all from the Leeds area. The fourth suspect is Jamaican-born Germaine Lindsay, 19, who came to Britain as an infant.\nPolice on Saturday released an image captured by surveillance cameras showing all four bombers with backpacks entering the train station in Luton, north of London, the morning of the attacks. Investigators say the four took a train from Luton to London's King's Cross station, where they split up to carry out the bombings.\nThe investigation in Leeds has focused in recent days on an Islamic shop near the home of Tanweer. Police continued their search Sunday of the Iqra Learning Centre, which appeared to sell Islamic books and DVDs and offer seminars and presentations. Police also continued searching a house a few streets from the Tanweer family home.\nOfficers also have been searching the Leeds home of an Egyptian biochemist for more evidence after investigators reportedly found traces of explosives in the man's bathtub. Magdy Mahmoud Mustafa el-Nashar is being interrogated by Egyptian authorities; they say the biochemist denies any connection to the attacks.\nEgypt is not prepared to hand el-Nashar over to Britain, Egyptian security officials said Saturday as British investigators arrived to sit in on the questioning. The two countries have no extradition treaty.\nIn Pakistan, meanwhile, intelligence officials say authorities are examining a possible connection between Tanweer and two al-Qaida-linked militant groups.\nA woman killed in the bombings, Susan Levy, 53, a mother of two, was cremated Sunday in a private service in north London -- the second service so far for London terror victims. Police say Levy was traveling on the Piccadilly subway line, which was hit by the bomb near King's Cross station.\nAbout 700 people were injured in the morning rush-hour attacks. Police said more than 40 people remained hospitalized, at least six of them in critical condition.