THE hunt for the mastermind behind the London terror attacks dramatically widened last night with the arrest of four suspects, as authorities warned that further atrocities in the British capital were a "very strong possibility".
British police chief Sir Ian Blair admitted the man, whose identity had been known to investigators for days, was on a "watch list" as a low-grade suspect and arrived in Britain two weeks before the bombings. But he was not placed under surveillance.
He arrived at the Suffolk port of Felixstowe and left from Heathrow airport in full view of Special Branch agents hours before the blasts that left at least 54 dead, including Australian Sam Ly.
The man is known to have links to the top of al-Qaida, including two of terrorist leader Osama bin Laden's strategic lieutenants on the subcontinent and another in the US.
Jamaican-born husband and father Jermaine Lindsay was named as the "squadron leader" of the terrorists. Security chiefs believe he may have acted as the go-between with the terror mastermind.
Officials in Washington also claimed that Lindsay was on a watch list, but the British lost track of him.
Lindsay and another of the bombers were last night linked to a thwarted UK terror plot.
It was revealed yesterday that captured al-Qaida operatives issued at least two warnings that attacks were planned on London's commuter system.
Asked about the bungle that saw the suspected mastermind slip through the grasp of authorities, Sir Ian said: "Nothing at the moment . . . links him directly. But what we expect to find at some stage is that there is a clear al-Qaida link . . . because the four men who are dead, who we believe are the bombers, are in the category of foot soldiers."
Pakistani intelligence has previously indicated that one of the bombers, Shehzad Tanweer, met a member of a group linked to al-Qaida during his visit to the country last December.
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