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Anti-terror hunt widens amid visa row

By Carl Dinnen

Updated on 10 April 2009

Anti-terror police search a tenth property amid questions over how so many of the Pakistanis involved in Wednesday's raids got to Britain on student visas.

Two of those believed to be under arrest applied to Liverpool's John Moores University through a recruitment office in Pakistan's North West Frontier province.

Channel 4 News also understands the two students - who could, of course, yet be innocent - visited Pakistan together in recent months.

As police here raided yet another home in Liverpool, a row was brewing over how foreign students are vetted.

Pakistan's high commissioner suggests Britain needs to improve its system and says if his security services were told who was applying, they could help.

Police searches have continued today in the north west of England, where 10 properties are now under forensic scrutiny and 12 men remain in custody.

Channel 4 News has established that at least some of those men did come to Britain with student visas from Peshawar, the capital of Pakistan's dangerous North West Frontier province.

But while Gordon Brown and Pakistan's president pledge mutual help to tackle violent extremism, the row over student visas deepens.

Immigration debate

Krishnan Guru-Murthy spoke to the shadow home secretary, Chris Grayling and the immigration minister, Phil Woolas, who has been implementing the recent changes to the student visa system.

He asked why what he had called a major loophole had been left open for so long.

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