A man suspected of trying to blow up a transatlantic airliner with explosives hidden in his shoes was a British convert to Islam who almost certainly did not act alone, the head of his London mosque said today.
The suspect, who was carrying a British passport in the name of Richard Reid when he boarded a Miami-bound flight in Paris, worshipped at the Brixton mosque in south London before falling in with Muslim extremists, its chairman Abdul Haqq Baker said.
Reid was forcibly subdued by flight attendants and fellow-passengers on Saturday when he lit a match and appeared to be trying to set his shoes on fire.
Baker said he was convinced there were other militants behind him, using him as a guinea pig in a new terror operation.
"The way he tried to commit this act shows his gullibility," Baker told reporters in Brixton. "He was sent as a tester. We here at the centre honestly believe there are more serious things to come and we have told the police that.
"I would say he was very, very impressionable."
The FBI also thinks Reid's shoe bombs were sophisticated enough to suggest he had an accomplice, The Boston Globereported on Tuesday. Establishing whether the suspect acted alone has been a main focus of the FBI investigation.
He said Reid, who was known to him as Abdel Rahim, was recruited by militants in London's Muslim community.
"If they have got the likes of Rahim, there are a lot more and we are very concerned about that," Baker said.
Earlier, he told BBC Radiothat Reid had come to the mosque for instruction having converted to Islam in prison.
"He was a very amiable, cooperative individual in the early part... Towards the end of his period with us, we noticed a change."
Baker said it was possible Reid knew Zacarias Moussaoui, a Frenchman of Moroccan descent who also spent time in Brixton.
Moussaoui faces conspiracy charges in the United States in connection with the September 11th suicide hijacking attacks on New York and Washington.
Some of the 19 hijackers who died flying planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon passed through Britain at different times. Moussaoui has been dubbed the 20th hijacker.
Reid attended court on Monday in Boston, where the American Airlines Boeing 767 was diverted. He was ordered to reappear on Friday.
The weekend mid-air drama raised fears of another attack like those launched on September 11th, which have been blamed on the al Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden.
Doubts remain over Reid's true identity. Britain's Scotland Yard said Reid was believed to be British, but French officials have been quoted saying he is a Sri Lankan Muslim named Tariq Raja using a false British passport.
The London Timesnewspaper said Reid was born in 1973 in Bromley, southeast London, to an English mother and a Jamaican father.