Suspect likely to fight extradition

LONDON -- The lawyer for one of four men suspected of trying to blow up subway trains and a bus in London said he would probably fight extradition from Italy to the United Kingdom, a process that could take up to two months.

Speaking to reporters in Rome, Antonietta Sonnessa, the lawyer for Osman Hussain, said Hussain ''is not really helping with the investigation," despite disclosure by law enforcement officials of Hussain's conversations with Italian police in which he allegedly admitted to bringing explosives onto a subway train at Shepherd's Bush in West London, but said the device and those carried by accomplices were only meant to scare -- not kill -- passengers.

British investigators are anxious for Hussain to be brought to the high-security jail at Paddington Green, where his alleged accomplices have been undergoing interrogation since their dramatic arrests here Friday.

Hussain eluded the largest dragnet in British history by boarding a high-speed train at London's Waterloo Station five days after the attempted attacks and made his way to Paris, then Rome. His escape raised serious questions about security at passport checkpoints in Britain.

Responding to those concerns, Geoff Hoon, majority leader of the House of Commons, told the BBC that more stringent passport checks may be introduced.

British police, meanwhile, continued yesterday to track down friends, associates, and potential accomplices of the suspects, raiding two homes in the seaside city of Brighton, about 60 miles south of London. Sussex police, accompanied by Anti-Terrorist Branch officers from the Metropolitan Police in London, arrested six men and a woman at the two residences, a police spokesman said.

The spokesman said that the officers who carried out the raid were not armed, that no neighbors were evacuated as a precaution, and that those arrested were being questioned locally, not moved to Paddington Green. All those factors would indicate that those arrested are not likely to have been directly involved in the plot.

As of last night, 18 people were in custody in Britain in connection with the failed July 21 attacks, which police say were designed to emulate the July 7 attacks on three subway trains and a bus that killed 52 passengers and the four bombers.

In Italy, police arrested one of Hussain's brothers, Fati Issac, in the northern town of Brescia, on what Italian police described as suspicion of destroying documents sought by police, according to the Italian news agency ANSA. Another brother, Remzi Issac, was arrested Friday.

Italian police want to find out if Hussain came to Italy because he had family there or whether there is a cell based in Italy determined to mount an attack in another country that is contributing troops to the US occupation of Iraq. Spain withdrew troops from Iraq after Islamic militants bombed commuter trains in Madrid last year, killing 191 people.

During an interrogation in Rome's Regina Coeli jail, Hussain reportedly said members of the cell of East Africans were motivated by what they saw as injustices in Iraq. He said they watched videos over the Internet which depicted the suffering and killing of Iraqi civilians during the US military campaign there.

According to La Repubblica, an Italian newspaper, Hussain said the group had a ''political conviction that it is necessary to give a signal to do something" about Iraq. He said they had access to information about Al Qaeda but were not directly associated with the terrorist group.

A police spokesman, meanwhile, denied media reports here that police were searching for a third cell in Britain. Police have not yet said whether they believe that the group that carried out the July 21 attempted attacks was connected to those who carried out the deadly July 7 bombings.