British police arrested a third man in connection with last week's failed attack against London's transit system and said Sunday they were trying to penetrate what they suspect is an al-Qaida network behind the plot. Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair expressed deep regret to the family of Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian electrician shot dead by police on the subway Friday after he was mistaken for a terrorist. Blair called the killing a "tragedy," but defended officers' right to use deadly force against suspected terrorists.The latest arrest was made Saturday in an area near London's southern Stockwell neighborhood, Tulse Hill, where Menezes had lived and near the subway station where he was killed. The man was arrested "on suspicion of the commission, instigation or preparation of acts of terrorism," said a police spokeswoman. Police are still holding two men arrested in Stockwell on Friday, Blair said. None of their identities have been released.
Police also said they carried out several controlled explosions Sunday to destroy a package found in northwest London that may have been linked to devices used in the botched attacks. Blair said he suspected an al-Qaida network was involved in last Thursday's failed attacks. He had previously said al-Qaida was probably linked to the July 7 attacks as well in which four suicide bombers killed 52 people and themselves. "The way in which al-Qaida operates is not a sort of classic cell structure," the police chief told Britain's Sky News television. "It has facilitators, so we're looking for the bomb makers, we're looking for the chemists, we're looking for the financiers, we're looking for the people who groomed these young people, so it will be a wide network that we're trying to penetrate."
| Ummm... Ian? That's a classic cell structure. |