Kafeel had left a suicide note at his house: report

LONDON: Kafeel Ahmed, the Indian engineer who allegedly drove a blazing jeep into the Glasgow airport, had left a suicide note at his house, a media report said on Sunday
amid claims that he had links with a senior al-Qaeda operative.
     
The 27-year-old from Bangalore was allegedly radicalizedby Hizb ut-Tahrir, the extremist group which the Britishgovernment tried to ban two years ago, a media report said on Sunday.
    
Shiraz Maher, a former member, claimed that Ahmed cameunder the group's influence in 2004 while he was doingresearch at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, The SundayTimes reported.
     
"A suicide note was found at the house near Glasgow where Ahmed had been staying since April," a security source was quoted as saying.
      
It said Kafeel Ahmed, who is fighting for his life in hospital, was so badly burnt that his mobile telephone is said to have melted into his body.
     
Ahmed knew one of the terror group's most high-profile bomb makers in Europe, convict terrorist Abbas Boutrab, when he was planning to target airliners, The Observer reported quoting senior security sources.
    
Also, at least one of the suspects being quizzed over the alleged plots to set off car bombs in London and Glasgow, was recently in touch with the Osama-bin Laden's terror network in Iraq, media here reported .
     
The development has fuelled a theory that the failed attacks were designed as a farewell to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair "to punish him" for his role in Iraq.