Police quizzes London Tube terror suspects
London, Sept. 18: Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorism officers on Monday stepped up their investigation into the “bucket bomb” on a London Underground train and continued questioning the two suspects arrested in connection with last week’s blast that left 30 people wounded.
The identities of the 18year-old and 21-year-old, being held on suspicion of terrorism offences, are yet to be officially revealed but it has emerged that both are refugees who had lived in the same foster home in Sunbury, Surrey, southeast England, which has been the focal point of police raids and searches over the weekend.
The younger man arrested at Dover ferry port on Saturday morning is an Iraqi refugee and the 21year-old arrested later in the day has been named locally as Yahyah Farroukh, a Syrian refugee fostered by the same elderly couple from Sunbury — Penelope and Ronald Jones.
With the arrest of the suspects, the UK Home Secretary Amber Rudd announced that the country’s terror treat level, which had been raised to its highest at “critical”, would be lowered back to “severe” as “sufficient progress has been made” into the investigation.
“There is still much more to do but this greater clarity and this progress has led JTAC — the independent body that assess threat — to come to the judgement that an attack is no longer imminent,” said Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, the UK’s National Lead for CounterTerrorism Policing.