Intelligence

MI5 fails to throw light on bombers after six months of investigations

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Maggie Stratton
BRITAIN'S intelligence services know alarmingly little about the worst terrorist attack on Britain despite more than six months of investigations, it emerged yesterday.
A leaked secret report for Tony Blair and senior Ministers into the July 7 London bombings states: "We know little about what three of the bombers did in Pakistan, when attack planning began, how and when the attackers were recruited, the extent of any external direction or assistance and the extent and role of any wider network."
The eight-page report by the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC), a Sunday newspaper reported, admits MI5 still does not know whether the attacks of July 7 and July 21 were linked and whether al-Qaida was behind them.

It has already been reported that spies knew the suspected leader of the July 7 bombings Mohammed Sidique Khan, from Dewsbury, was planning to fight for al-Qaida more than a year before the attacks.
MI5 had originally believed Khan and the three other July 7 suicide bombers – Shehzad Tanweer, from Beeston, Leeds, Hasib Hussain, 18, from Beeston and Jermaine Lindsay, who grew up in Huddersfield – acted alone, but they now think a wider network may have been involved.
And, the report leaked to The Sunday Times reveals, the intelligence services have found "growing evidence of a wider extremist network in West Yorkshire associated with the 7/7 bombers."
It adds: "We still do not know whether we are dealing with an orchestrated campaign or coincidental/ copycat attacks.
"We do not know how, when and with whom the attack planning originated. And we still do not know what degree of external assistance either group had.
"Whilst investigations are progressing, there remain significant gaps in our knowledge."
The report speaks of no insight into the degree of input from al-Qaida, how long the July 7 attacks had been planned, or how the suspects operated.
Tories are calling for an independent inquiry into what the intelligence services knew before the attacks.
And Shadow Homeland Affairs Minister Patrick Mercer said yesterday he was "extremely concerned" about "complacency within the Government" over the terrorist threat to Britain.
He added: "At the moment people think 'We have had our attack and we have got away with it. Fifty-two killed is too many, but it isn't the two or three thousand lost in New York or the 200 in Madrid'. And therefore the tendency for all of these (security) policies to be put on the backburner."
Among the findings presented in the report are that a network of "Iraqi jihadis" is attempting to bring a terrorist campaign to Britain and a group of al-Qaida facilitators in the West Midlands are being investigated.
MI5 believes the main West Midlands suspect directed a second man, an Iraqi, who arranged a trip to a Pakistan training camp for the leader of a separate British terrorist cell.
The camp, which the cell leader visited over three months in early 2005, may have been the same one where former teaching assistant Mohammad Sidique Khan was trained. The report "speculates" both men may have been trained by al-Qaida at the same time.

January 30, 2006 at 10:10 PM in MI5 | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home