Intelligence

Questions Unanswered in London Investigation

Questions Unanswered in London Investigation - New York Times

By ALAN COWELL and RAYMOND BONNER
Published: August 15, 2005

LONDON, Aug. 14 - With some fanfare in the weeks since the London bombings, the British authorities have quickly detained the main surviving suspects and, just as rapidly, embarked on a high-profile campaign to expel prominent, foreign-born Islamic figures as part of promised measures against extremism.

But the investigation into the lethal July 7 attacks and the failed July 21 attacks seems to have undergone some less publicized changes that have left important questions unanswered, in public at least. Some leads, once hotly pursued, have fizzled out. Others have proved to be blind alleys.

Investigators now doubt their early estimation that the two groups of attackers had an organizational link to Al Qaeda, a senior British police official said, though the attackers might have taken their inspiration from it. Nor have investigators identified any outside mastermind, or any evidence of an operational link between the groups of attackers.

Initially, Sir Ian Blair, commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police, said the July 21 attacks had some "resonance" with the earlier bombing: both attacks made targets of three subway trains and a bus; both involved young Muslim men with bulky bags or backpacks laden with homemade explosives capable, in his words, of wreaking "carnage."

Since then, comparisons of the two sets of attackers have become more nuanced. The groups differed in makeup. Three of the four July 7 bombers, who died with their 52 victims in subways and on a double-decker bus in London, were concentrated near Leeds, in the north, and were of Pakistani descent. The July 21 group, whose four bombs failed to go off in the London transit system, came from disparate areas, north, south and west of the city, and several of them were of African descent.

One of the suspects in the July 21 attacks, Hussain Osman, who is also known as Hamdi Issac and who fled to Italy, is an Ethiopian-born father of three who told investigators in Rome that their attacks were "copycat" attacks intended to frighten, but not kill, Britons, said his court-appointed lawyer, Antoinette Sonnessa. Still, investigators have not ruled out the possibility that the groups were linked, said diplomats here, and European and American law enforcement officials.

Philosophically, both groups seemed driven by a reverence for Osama bin Laden.

"Osama bin Laden is a hero in the Islamic view," said Mohamoud Nur, a Somali social worker, seeking to explain the draw of radical Islam among the 150,000 Somalis in London. "Somalis in Britain believe that Osama bin Laden stood against a superpower that oppressed people." But he denied that that belief would translate into suicidal terrorism.

Two weeks ago, the investigators thought they had identified a third cell, of six or seven men, that was preparing for another attack. But in recent interviews, two senior diplomats here who are kept informed of the investigation and an American official said investigators had concluded that the intelligence was faulty.

The investigation is entering a more difficult, grinding phase. Three of the four main suspects in the July 21 attack have been charged, which means that their interrogations have effectively ended - and that the police are legally severely limited in what they can say publicly about the case.

Some tasks are seemingly herculean. Investigators are trying to follow up on calls to Pakistan made from some of the homes and cellphones of the July 7 attackers. A Pakistani official said investigators were trying to trace more than 100 calls. But most were made to commercial telephone centers, which are common in many developing countries, where people pay by the call for connections.

"Can you imagine trying to get records from these call offices in Pakistan?" the official said.

Pakistani officials are also still tracing the activities of three of the July 7 bombers, who spent time in Pakistan in the last two years, the official said.

As the investigation continues, other possibilities for common strands between the groups of attackers have emerged.

They may have shared a sense of separateness from the society around them and from older generations - a phenomenon as familiar among second-generation immigrants in Leeds as among those in London. "These people do not have a strong identity," said Jemal Omar, a school career adviser from Eritrea, who is among 10,000 Eritreans who have found sanctuary here. "They are British more than their parents, and they are alienated because they don't fit in 100 percent."

That may make fundamentalism more alluring, said Mr. Nur, the Somali social worker. "If you are young and energetic and you feel marginalized and you meet this extreme ideology, it will be attractive."

Those influences could well have coalesced initially at the Finsbury Park mosque - once a hotbed of Islamic militancy under the stewardship of Sheik Abu Hams al-Masri, an Egyptian-born cleric wanted in the United States on terrorism charges dating from 1999. Mr. Masri is in detention facing extradition hearings.

Toaha Qureshi, the chairman of the trustees of the Stockwell mosque in south London, said Mr. Osman, the man held in Rome, was one of a group of Islamic militants in their 20's who tried to "take over" the Stockwell mosque in June 2003 after Britain's charitable authorities closed the Finsbury Park mosque.

Their intention was to use the mosque as a base for radical sermons and proselytizing, he said. According to the police, three of the July 21 bombers began their journeys at the Stockwell subway station, and Mr. Osman lived in a housing project in Stockwell with his wife, Yeshiemebet Girma, and their three children.

More conservative Muslims in Stockwell resisted the takeover attempt in 2003, Mr. Qureshi said. Thereafter, some of the radicals may have congregated in gyms - one of the bags in the July 21 attacks was from a chain of workout centers called Fitness First. The July 7 bombers, too, were reported to have operated outside mosques, congregating in places like Islamic bookstores and a gym.

Other suspects in the July 21 attacks who have been charged with attempted murder and explosives offenses in London include Ibrahim Muktar Said, an Eritrean-born British citizen who arrived in London with his parents at age 12 in 1990, and Yassin Hassan Omar, 24, a Somali refugee who arrived with his sister when he was 11.

But there were connections to cities besides London. One of the men accused in the July 21 attacks, Mr. Omar, was arrested in Birmingham, where a Somali minority has built in strength as Somalis migrate to Britain from other European countries like the Netherlands where, as refugees, they acquired citizenship enabling them to crisscross European frontiers at will.

Some of the people accused of helping Mr. Osman - who told British authorities he was a Somali when he came here from Italy in the mid-1990's - were seized in Brighton, on the south coast.

The ties between the July 21 attackers and their forebears' homeland seem to have been looser and less of an influence on their behavior than those of the July 7 attackers, with their travel in Pakistan, where religious extremism is strong.

"There's no link between them and Somali society whatever," Mr. Nur, the Somali social worker, said of the July 21 group, expressing a view echoed by Eritreans and Ethiopians. "Whatever developed in them was here in the United Kingdom."

Stephen Grey and Souad Mekhennet contributed reporting from London for this article, and William K. Rashbaum from New York.

August 16, 2005 at 08:24 AM in Current Terrorism | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home