Following revelations last week in this newspaper that the Glasgow airport bomber had frequent communications with Malta, foreign security sources said that anti-terrorist security forces have frequently investigated some asylum seekers who came to Malta by boat and subsequently found their way to the continent.
Kafeel Ahmed, who suffered 90 per cent burns after driving a blazing Jeep Cherokee into Glasgow airport on 30 June, also linked to the two unexploded car bombs in central London the previous day, was in frequent contact with Malta in the months leading up to the series of foiled terrorist attacks according to Indian police.
Indian investigators probing the activities of two Indian brothers, Kafeel and Sabeel Ahmed, allegedly at the centre of the recent terrorism plots, say they have found a SIM card used by Kafeel Ahmed when he was last in India between December 2005 and May 2007.
Using mobile phone forensic techniques, Indian police say they have analysed a SIM card and mobile phone line used by Kafeel Ahmed that was registered in his father's name.
The analyses, according to Bangalore police investigators, have revealed what they describe as "frequent communications" with Malta, the UK, Finland, Saudi Arabia and Oman.
Foreign security sources said that the links, which lead back to Malta, are being actively studied for possible links to al Qaeda and other terrorist networks.
Although difficult on the physical side, it would be relatively simple for a terrorist network to insert sleepers among the hordes of people who arrive by boat, and without passports, on Maltese shores and to make their way from Malta to the rest of Europe where they could link up with their brothers in terror.
The enormous use of phone communications by the illegal immigrants is also under study although it is difficult to see how phoning from public phone boxes with a pre-paid and cheap phone card, which the illegal immigrants seem to prefer, could be traced back to anyone. So too the use of satellite and mobile phones.
Security-minded people here in Malta also claim that some who come destitute and penniless seem to have sent ahead money through the banks, as they are known to have purchased property, but this could just mean the existence of family or other networks rather than necessarily the existence of a network with links to terror.
Only yesterday Italian police arrested three people of North African origin allegedly with connections to terrorist networks. The three, residents at Perugia, were charged with recruiting on behalf of terror groups and of training them in the use of weapons and explosives.
Among those arrested was the Imam of a mosque in Perugia and two men who used to live in the mosque. The investigators claimed that the three used to watch and show others videos selected from terrorist Internet sites which show acts of terror and which incite to violence.