|
Home>News Center>World | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
Egypt questions biochemist on UK attacks
Britain's Foreign Office had no comment on the security official's statement. The Egyptian Interior Minister said el-Nashar came to Egypt from London on vacation and intended to return to Britain. "He pointed out (to questioners) that all his belongings remained in his apartment in Britain," the ministry said. In Leeds, authorities searched el-Nashar's townhouse in a complex of two-story brown brick apartments. The home was surrounded by blue-and-white police tape and covered in scaffolding draped in white plastic sheeting. Forensic teams in white coveralls carted out material. TATP, or triacetone triperoxide, is a highly unstable explosive made from commercially available chemicals. Andy Oppenheimer, an explosives expert with Jane's Information Group, said TATP is strong enough to have caused the damage wreaked by last week's bombs. But he said making such a highly volatile explosive stable enough to carry out closely synchronized attacks would have required advanced knowledge of chemistry. Police say the three subway blasts happened within a minute. El-Nashar's research at Leeds focused on biocatalysis and enzyme immobilization, according to a biography of him at the university's Web site. That kind of research "wouldn't have anything directly to do with explosives" or with biological weapons, said Constance Ann Schall, an associate professor at the Chemical Engineering Department at the University of Toledo in Ohio. Meanwhile, the families of Khan and Hussain — the 18-year-old believed to
have blown up the double-decker bus — issued statements saying they were
devastated by the attack and had no idea he could have been involved.
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
