THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH: A female engineering student has been arrested in Yemen on suspicion of posting the packages containing bombs found on two cargo jets in Dubai and Britain.
The 22-year-old woman, named locally as Hanan al Samawi, was traced through a phone number left with a cargo company. Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen's president, said the information that identified her was provided by the US and the United Arab Emirates.
She was arrested at a house in a poor area in the west of Sana'a, where she is studying medicine at the university. Her mother was also arrested, but is not a prime suspect according to her lawyer.
A group of women gathered outside the university carrying banners, some of them written in English, saying the arrested women is being used as a scapegoat.
The bomb intercepted in Britain on its way to America was designed to explode in mid-air and may have been targeted at the UK.
David Cameron said he believed the device was constructed to detonate while the aircraft was in flight.
He said a plot to blow it up over British soil could not be ruled out.
The Prime Minister's dramatic intervention came as the investigation into the plot was centring on one of al-Qaeda's most senior commanders.
US and British security officials believe Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born figurehead of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) was behind the foiled attack in which two ink cartridge bombs, posted in Yemen, were intercepted in Britain and Dubai on the way to America.
Al-Awlaki, who is in hiding in Yemen, is regarded by the CIA and MI6 as the driving force behind the transformation of AQAP from a regional group into an international terrorist organisation.
Fears of more plots emerged after investigators in Sana'a, the Yemeni capital, said they were examining 24 other suspect packages. Read on and comment >>> Sean Rayment, Patrick Hennessy and David Barrett | Sunday, October 31, 2010
