Several of the suspects were on a watch list compiled by the domestic intelligence agency MI5, a British government security official said, indicating their identities previously had been logged by agents. The official did not say why they were put on the watch list.

The official said Britain's security services are watching about 1,600 people and have details logged about hundreds more.

The Times of London said one of the eight people in custody, Iraqi-born physician Bilal Abdulla, reportedly had links to radical Islamic groups and several others were linked to extremist radicals on Britain's watchlist.

Abdulla was a passenger in the Jeep that smashed into Glasgow's airport. Investigators believe the same men who parked two explosives-laden Mercedes cars in London may have also driven the blazing SUV in Glasgow, officials say.

Shiraz Maher, a former member of a radical Islamic group, said he knew Abdulla at Cambridge University.

"He was certainly very angry about what was happening in Iraq. ... He supported the insurgency in Iraq. He actively cheered the deaths of British and American troops in Iraq," Maher told British Broadcasting Corp.

He said Abdulla berated a Muslim roommate for not being devout enough, showing him a beheading video and warning that could happen to him. Maher said Abdulla also claimed to have a number of videos of the then-leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed by a US airstrike last year.

Abdulla had been disciplined by his employers at the Royal Alexandra Hospital outside Glasgow for spending too much time on the Internet, according to hospital staff, suggesting the plot may have been planned in cyberspace.

Police seized several computers from hospitals in Glasgow, Stoke-on-Kent and Liverpool.

BBC, citing unidentified sources, said police in Scotland had identified a house rented by one of the suspects arrested in Glasgow as a potential bomb factory. Police could not comment on the report.

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