Australia turned down NHS 'bomb' doctors 'because they weren't good enough'

Sabeel Ahmed, 26, and Khalid Ahmed, 25, were turned down by authorities in Western Australia state because their medical qualifications were not up to standard, a state official said.

Neither was denied entry for security reasons.

A third suspect - Muhammad Haneef, 27 - was arrested last week.

Australian police are quizzing five more Indian doctors today who worked in the NHS.

The medics - all of whom knew Haneef - were being questioned following raids in Perty and Kalgoorie in which computers and other material were seized.

The police said 31,000 documents, including foreign computer files, had been confiscated and links to the London and Glasgow bomb plots were becoming "more concrete".

Federal police commissioner Mick Keelty said no arrests had been made but confirmed that a number of "migrant" doctors of Indian background were being questioned.

"There are a number of people now being interviewed. It is quite a complex investigation and the links to the UK are becoming more concrete.

"They are migrant doctors of similar nationality and backgrounds to the other doctors who have been questioned."

Mohammed Haneef was arrested at Brisbane Airport as he tried to board a plane to Pakistan

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has spoken to Australian counterpart John Howard: "This is an international investigation now," he said.

"I believe from what I know we are getting to the bottom of this cell that has been responsible for what has been happening."

Haneef was arrested on Monday as he tried to board a flight from Brisbane with a one-way ticket, believed to be to India, where his wife has just had a baby.

Police have not said what role Haneef may have played in the bomb plots, but that he is being held on suspicion of having connections to a terrorist group.

Haneef came to Australia last year after getting a job at a hospital in eastern Queensland state.

The Australian Medical Association has confirmed that Haneef's relatives Sabeel and Khalid Ahmed, who are brothers, had tried to gain visas to practise medicine in Western Australia.

Geoff Dobb, the president of the Australian Medical Association in Western Australia, said Sabeel Ahmed and Khalid Ahmed had applied for jobs there since 2005.

It is understood Sabeel first applied in February 2005. He applied again numerous times under different names. Then in January 2006, he used his real name to apply once more.

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"We checked their qualifications and references and decided that they did not meet the standard required," Dobb said.

"It had nothing to do with suspicions of any terrorist associations," he added.

Sabeel Ahmed, 26, worked at Halton Hospital in Runcorn, Cheshire, where Haneef also worked in 2005.

The three men are among eight medics - all of Middle Eastern or Indian backgrounds - under arrest following the failed bombings in London last Friday and the attack on Glasgow Airport on Saturday.

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A judge has granted police permission to hold Haneef without charge for another four days in connection to the failed bombings in London and Scotland.

And a British counter-terrorism expert has arrived in Brisbane to question him.

Two security sources confirmed yesterday that Haneef had travelled back to Britain since starting work on Brisbane's Gold Coast. Thousands of files on Haneef's laptop are to be assessed, as well as phone and email traffic between him and the suspects in Britain.

Khalid Ahmed was one of two men alleged to have rammed an explosives-laden car into Glasgow airport terminal.

The Ahmed brothers and Haneef grew up in Bangalore, India, and studied medicine at the same time. Sabeel Ahmed and Haneef studied at the same medical school.

Although attention originally focused on the Middle Eastern links of the detained doctors - some of whom have Iraqi, Jordanian and Saudi backgrounds - the Indian connection is becoming ever more significant.

It has emerged that Haneef, who graduated from the Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences in Bangalore in 2002, studied with the Ahmed brothers in India.

News that more Indian doctors are being questioned will heighten fears that an extensive network of extremists from the sub-continent was involved in the plot.

• Muslim groups in Britain, reacting to the failed car bomb attacks, launched a campaign on Friday to declare that terrorism is "not in our name".

The Muslims United coalition placed advertisements in British national newspapers praising the emergency services as "courageous" and hailing the government's "calm and proportionate" reaction to the crisis.

The "not in our name" theme was borrowed from mass protests in Britain against the invasion of Iraq.

The ads also quoted the Quran: "Whoever kills an innocent soul, it is as if he killed the whole of mankind. And whoever saves one, it is as if he saved the whole of mankind."

Organizers set up a Web site, www.Islamispeace.org.uk, to promote its message.