A Briton suspected of links to al-Qaida was deported Sunday to Britain, a senior Zambian official said.

Britain sent a plane to collect Haroon Rashid Aswat, who was detained in the Zambian capital on July 20, Home Affairs Secretary Peter Mumba said. Aswat boarded the plane at 9 am (0700 GMT) and departed soon after, he said. No further details were released.

British newspaper reports, citing security sources, have said that investigators do not believe he was linked to the London attacks.

Zambian authorities questioned Aswat about 20 phone calls reportedly made on his South African cell phone with some of the bombers responsible for the July 7 attacks that killed 56 people in London.

British and American investigators have also interrogated Aswat, 31, according to Zambian officials.

Aswat has also been implicated in a 1999 plot to establish a terrorist training camp in the western US state of Oregon, hostage taking in Yemen and funding terror training in Afghanistan. He was reportedly once an associate of Abu Hamza al-Masri, a radical Muslim preacher who is awaiting trial in Britain on charges of incitement to murder.

Aswat told Zambian investigators he used to be a bodyguard for Osama bin Laden. British police have said the July 7 attacks in London bore al-Qaida's hallmarks.

Zambian police said intelligence agents followed Aswat to Lusaka after he entered the country from Botswana on July 6 and arrested him at a house in Lusaka on charges of violating the country's immigration laws.

Before he was detained in Zambia, Aswat had been in Johannesburg, South Africa. Zambian officials also said Aswat made frequent trips to Mozambique and Botswana.

South African officials have declined to comment on media reports that Aswat was under surveillance in South Africa and that authorities there did not act on an American request to arrest him after British security forces asked them not to.

'Britain warned before bombing'

Also Sunday, media reports in London said Saudi Arabian officials warned Britain before the July 7 attacks that a terror strike was being planned on Britain.

Prince Turki al Faisal, the Saudi Ambassador to Britain, told the Sunday Telegraph that his government warned British officials four months ago with information obtained from suspects being interrogated in his country.

"There was certainly close liaison between the Saudi Arabian intelligence authorities and the British intelligence authorities some time ago, when information was passed to Britain about a heightened terrorist threat to London," Prince Turki was quoted as saying in a statement.

Meanwhile, The Observer quoted a security official in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, as saying that information was passed to MI5 and MI6, the secret security and intelligence services.

Saudi security sources are said to be investigating whether two al-Qaida operatives were in phone contact with a British ringleader of the July 7 bomb plotters.

Source: China Daily