UK Police Make 'Significant' Arrest in Hunt for London Train Bomber

An injured woman is led away after the terrorist attack at Parsons Green underground station in London, Britain, September 15, 2017. REUTERS/Luke MacGregor
An injured woman is led away after the terrorist attack at Parsons Green underground station in London, Britain, September 15, 2017. REUTERS/Luke MacGregor
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UK Police Make 'Significant' Arrest in Hunt for London Train Bomber

An injured woman is led away after the terrorist attack at Parsons Green underground station in London, Britain, September 15, 2017. REUTERS/Luke MacGregor
An injured woman is led away after the terrorist attack at Parsons Green underground station in London, Britain, September 15, 2017. REUTERS/Luke MacGregor

British police hunting those behind a homemade bomb attack, which injured 30 people on a London underground train on Friday, said they had arrested an 18-year-old man in a “significant” move.

"We have made a significant arrest in our investigation this morning," Neil Basu, Senior National Co-ordinator for Counter Terrorism Policing, said in a statement. "Although we are pleased with the progress made, this investigation continues and the threat level remains at critical."

The man was arrested by Kent police under the Terrorism Act in the southern port area of Dover on Saturday morning.

Thirty people were treated in hospital after the improvised device detonated in the packed train at Parsons Green station in southwest London on Friday morning, in what was Britain's fifth terror attack in six months.

The toll was revised upwards by one early Saturday.

Images from inside the train car after the blast showed that the device was contained in a bucket with wires hanging out of it and that it was concealed in a plastic shopping bag.

Police are combing through closed-circuit TV images and have extensively studied the remains of the device without giving details about it.

The train hit by the bomber had video cameras in each car, and the London Underground network has thousands of cameras at the entrances to stations and along the labyrinth of subterranean and aboveground passageways leading from the entryway to the trains.

Saturday's “arrest will lead to more activity from our officers," police said.

"For strong investigative reasons we will not give any more details on the man we arrested at this stage.

ISIS said a group "detachment" had been behind the bombing.

Prime Minister Theresa May announced late Friday that the threat level had been raised to "critical -- meaning another attack could be imminent -- and said troops would take over guarding key sites to free police officers for deployment elsewhere.



Bangladesh Says Student Leaders Held for Their Own Safety

People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
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Bangladesh Says Student Leaders Held for Their Own Safety

People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)

Bangladesh said three student leaders had been taken into custody for their own safety after the government blamed their protests against civil service job quotas for days of deadly nationwide unrest.

Students Against Discrimination head Nahid Islam and two other senior members of the protest group were Friday forcibly discharged from hospital and taken away by a group of plainclothes detectives.

The street rallies organized by the trio precipitated a police crackdown and days of running clashes between officers and protesters that killed at least 201 people, according to an AFP tally of hospital and police data.

Islam earlier this week told AFP he was being treated at the hospital in the capital Dhaka for injuries sustained during an earlier round of police detention.

Police had initially denied that Islam and his two colleagues were taken into custody before home minister Asaduzzaman Khan confirmed it to reporters late on Friday.

"They themselves were feeling insecure. They think that some people were threatening them," he said.

"That's why we think for their own security they needed to be interrogated to find out who was threatening them. After the interrogation, we will take the next course of action."

Khan did not confirm whether the trio had been formally arrested.

Days of mayhem last week saw the torching of government buildings and police posts in Dhaka, and fierce street fights between protesters and riot police elsewhere in the country.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's government deployed troops, instituted a nationwide internet blackout and imposed a curfew to restore order.

- 'Carried out raids' -

The unrest began when police and pro-government student groups attacked street rallies organized by Students Against Discrimination that had remained largely peaceful before last week.

Islam, 26, the chief coordinator of Students Against Discrimination, told AFP from his hospital bed on Monday that he feared for his life.

He said that two days beforehand, a group of people identifying themselves as police detectives blindfolded and handcuffed him and took him to an unknown location to be tortured before he was released the next morning.

His colleague Asif Mahmud, also taken into custody at the hospital on Friday, told AFP earlier that he had also been detained by police and beaten at the height of last week's unrest.

Police have arrested at least 4,500 people since the unrest began.

"We've carried out raids in the capital and we will continue the raids until the perpetrators are arrested," Dhaka Metropolitan Police joint commissioner Biplob Kumar Sarker told AFP.

"We're not arresting general students, only those who vandalized government properties and set them on fire."