From TimesOnline :
ARMED police in Pakistan seized a major al-Qaeda figure yesterday who has suspected close links to the London bombers, The Times has learnt.
The Pakistani, who was among 24 arrested during a series of raids in Lahore and Karachi, was under interrogation last night over the alleged role he played in the terrorist attacks on July 7. “We suspect two or three of the detained [from Lahore] had links with the bombers, but one in particular, who is a major figure in al-Qaeda. We are interrogating them intensively,” one senior Pakistani official told The Times.
The arrests came as a leaked secret report revealed that intelligence chiefs believed three weeks before the London bombings that there were no known terrorist groups with “the current intent and the capability to attack Britain”. The reassurance delivered by the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC), based at MI5, led to the lowering of the alert state from “severe general” to “substantial”.
The leaking of the JTAC conclusion to The New York Times placed the Government and its intelligence advisers in an embarrassing position. Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, has already said in public that the decision to lower the terrorist threat alert was wrong…