7/7 London Bombings Report
Finally the government has released its long awaited report on the London Bombings of 2005 and I think I would not be alone in saying that it makes quite unsatisfactory reading as it really doesn’t tell Londoners anything that they didn’t already know and leaves many questions unanswered.
It was a few days prior to the 7th of July 2005 and we were thousands of miles away enjoying our slightly extended honeymoon. We had arrived early in the evening at our hotel and weary from our travelling all we wanted was a quick shower and dinner. As my wife was busy in the bathroom I sat on the bed and flicked through the channels looking for something in English to while away the time. As is typical in more remote areas the only choice was BBC World so I sat through a lengthy report on the security preparations for the Gleneagles G8 summit. “What have you been watching?” she asked as she emerged from the bathroom so I gave a brief synopsis and headed towards the door, stopped in the doorway and jabbed my thumb towards the TV set, “Just look at it. Almost every security operative we have is now in Scotland and soon every major leader in the world will be there too. This is the perfect time for a terrorist strike on London, its wide open. We should have let the bloody Swiss host it.”
I had no idea how right I was going to be.
So the government report claims :
“There is no apparent significance in the choice of 7 July as the date for the attacks and no indication that the G8 conference which was taking place at Gleneagles at the time was a factor.”
So it’s merely coincidence that the bombers would choose a time when London would be more exposed than any other time in years, the world’s leaders would be “on scene” with most of the world’s press and it coincides with the 4th anniversary of the Bradford race riots? If I could see the significance why couldn’t the security services?
“Siddeque Khan is now known to have visited Pakistan in 2003 and to have spent several months there with Shazad Tanweer between November 2004 and February 2005. It has not yet been established who they met in Pakistan, but it is assessed as likely that they had some contact with Al Qaida figures.”
British Asian men visit one of the world’s leading centres for jihadist ideology and the security services don’t seem to consider this as particularly significant then or even now. The Pakistani religious ministry now says more than 10,000 madrassas have been registered and 90% of foreign students have left the country in the aftermath of the London bombing but why wasn’t this done before? Is what they have done now enough? The central role that religious teachings in Pakistan has had in the spread of radical Islam has been understood for some time but somehow the government there is a partner in the “war on terror” and a rather limp hand is applied.
“The extent to which the 7 July attacks were externally planned, directed or controlled by contacts in Pakistan or elsewhere remains unclear. The Agencies believe that some form of operational training is likely to have taken place while Khan and Tanweer were in Pakistan. Contacts in the run-up to the attacks suggest they may have had advice or direction from individuals there. Claims in the media that a ‘mastermind’ left the UK the day before the attacks reflect one strand of an investigation that was subsequently discounted by the intelligence and security Agencies.”
Either the government doesn’t understand the nature of “open source” guerrilla warfare or they don’t wish to openly discuss it in the fear that it would be unwittingly spreading the concept to radical groups, I really hope it’s the latter rather than the former. The notion of a top-down command structure is distinctly old fashioned.
“We were working off a script which actually has been completely discounted from what we know as reality.”
No kidding.
“The threat from Al Qaida (AQ) leadership directed plots has not gone away and events in Iraq are continuing to act as motivation and a focus of a range of terrorist related activity in the UK.”
In direct contradiction to Blair’s assertion soon after the bombing that there was no connection between the bombing and the war in Iraq until the Joint Terrorist Analysis Centre published its report forcing him to climb down, a war which has done nothing but exacerbate the threat of terrorism in Europe and that would be obvious to any fool, except the fool in 10 Downing Street of course.
Additionally the report doesn’t seem to address conspiracy theorist questions such as :
- London underground bombing exercise takes place at exactly the same time as actual attack.
- Londoners Suspicious Of Station Closures Before Blasts.
- The Convenient Malfunction Of The London Bus Camera.
- “Military explosives” now become “homemade material”.
- Bomb was UNDER the train says eyewitness closest to it.
Looks to me like we still need a public enquiry then.
Update (14/05/05 16:35) : So the plot thickens yet farther in the Sunday Times : Spies ‘hid’ bomber tape from MPs.
“MI5 is being accused of a cover-up for failing to disclose to a parliamentary watchdog that it bugged the leader of the July 7 suicide bombers discussing the building of a bomb months before the London attacks.”
There was compelling evidence that Mohammed Sidique Khan presented a serious threat yet nothing was done.
“MI5 had secret tape recordings of Mohammad Sidique Khan, the gang leader, talking about how to build the device and then leave the country because there would be a lot of police activity.”
Not only that but it seems it was not his original intension to die in the attack, so why was there a change in plan? Or even more disturbingly this statement could also add weight to the conspiracy theory that the bombers were double-crossed and never intended to die in the attacks, a theory that springs from the odd behaviour of the bombers on the day, the return tickets they purchased and the car parked with more explosives. If so who did the double-cross?
I don’t like where this is leading at all.
Thanks Wolfie for this excellent post. I remember we were vacationing in Cyprus that day. After an exhausting tour driving on narrow roads in the mountains to visit old monasteries we came back to find the tv on in our B and B. The owner whose usual clientele is english was livid. There was a German family with young children and there was me the only far relative to this ‘culture of resentment and death’ or that was the way I felt things that night. I felt guilt even though I grew up a christian lebanese and became an atheist after I saw what religious frictions have done to my country. The only thing they teach you in the christian education, oriental version, is to feel guilty anytime something bad happens and it stays with you for life. We sat and we talked with the people after the tv ended the coverage. Cypriots in general don’t like Americans, they are resentful against their silence when Turkey invaded Cyprus. So the owner of the BandB started cursing against Americans blaming them for all this nonsense and we ended the evening with a sense of loss.
I think no serious inquiry was done until now on major terrorrist attacks since 9/11. Even the much lauded last 9/11 commission report in the US seems to have missed the important questions at least in the victim’s relatives eyes. I don’t subscribe to conspiracy theories but in the absence of explanations we are forced to make such theories. I have my own conspiracy theory and I am not afraid to say it. I don’t think governments are deliberately accomplices in bombing their own civilian populations and then covering up their crime. I think what could have happened for 9/11 as for the London bombings is that at some levels of the government they must have known about the imminent danger (for example the letter to Bush in August 2001 stating that Al-Qaeda is ready to attack targets inside the US and the concomittant information they had in the civil aviation on the fact that civil aviation might be used for terrorist attacks) because I am quite sure that all these terror groups are infiltrated. Now that the government having known of an imminent danger without doing anything exceptional to prevent this danger imply a clear responsibility here and this is what we see in all these so called reprots: inadequate prevention with some preknowledge of the attacks. Why is that ? Because they have a purpose letting the terrorist do the job they want to do. What purpose ? I don’t know. There could be many, including electoral purposes like in Spain and popular support for very unpopular policies like in the states. Also, public opinions are important. the tv covergae of such acts are a celar condemnation for the terrorrists and the countries who support them.
I am afraid something will happen in Canada. Our intelligence chief said so last week. Our prime minister has a very thin majority. I call him little Bush. Since he took office he forbid journalists from filming os taking pictures of sildiers who died in Afghanistan. He is for a change in the Afghan mission from humanitarian to more military. He reengaged Canada in NORAD (North American Defense Agreement), etc… He might try to do something to boost his popularity among Canadians and for this he does not have to do anyhting. they just have to let go free any terror plan they must know of being prepared in the country while preparing the public opinion for that…
There’s something very wrong about the situation we’re in if an ex-patriot Christian Lebanese woman feels that she is tarred with the same brush as an Islamic jihadist simply because of her ethnic origins and it exemplifies where we have gone very wrong with our battle against terror because what we should be doing is driving a wedge between the extremist and the moderate but what is in fact happening is the very opposite.
After 9/11 there was considerable sympathy for America in the Arab world but sadly this sympathy evaporated in the scorched earth of Iraq and now we are moving backwards very fast.
On this notion of a conspiracy of incompetence I’m inclined to agree as far too often its become the prevailing explanation. Last night on the BBC there was the regular political talk show “Question Time” where naturally the subject of this report was aired. The government’s spokesperson for the evening (Hazel Blears) reiterated the conclusion that the security services were overstretched but this explanation was refuted by elderly statesman Michael Heseltine (Conservative defence minister during the Thatcher government) who asked if they had asked for more resources (they hadn’t) and what they had been doing with their time since the collapse of the Iron curtain should have freed-up a lot of their resources. No satisfactory explanation was given.
Where do you start!?
There have been so many contradictions, red herrings and omissions in official and media accounts of 7/7 that it is impossible for the ordinary person to keep track of what is supposed to have happened. The newly published ‘official narrative’ does nothing to remedy this.
A handful of people are battling for a more objective, factual and honest account of 7/7 but if the mainstream media refuse to pick up the ball what chance do they have?
http://julyseventh.co.uk/index.html
\despairs
Wolfie,
Thank you for adding my blog to your blogroll.
I read your update about the bombings. It seems that we are evolving in a hollywood style plot with the difference that there will be no clear ending because nobody is going to answer this new evidence. Suppose MI5 agents were working for a foreign country (the US) in hiding the Khan tapes from the MPs, you need time to establish this suspicion as an evidence and in the meantime it can damage profoundly the relations between the UK and the US and it may have a snow ball effect on ‘Al-Qaeda bombings’ elsewhere and on the ‘war on terror’. However, my feeling is that any serious line of inquiry about the bombings, the ‘war on terror’ and all this nonsense will be initiated in the UK. From the beginning, the reactions of the public were clearly different in the UK when compared to those you have in the US and from the beginning, the British government showed nervosity in managing the public aspect of Iraq and the ‘war on terror’. I read everything that was related to Dr. David Kelly and I thought that to treat him in such a brutal manner, the government must have something to hide. Kelly’s death will come back to haunt Blair.
As Stef quite rightly points out, we have endured weeks of leaks and disinformation in the British press, most of which is reiterating the government line that lack of resources allowed the attack to happen, there is no link with the war in Iraq and none with Al Qa’ida. These explanations neatly support the government agendas; we require more tax money, war in Iraq was justified and it could be anyone thus ID cards and increased security is necessary. However, the official report doesn’t back-up this thesis and there seems to be a growing swell of resentment in the security services and military over government strategy and we may yet see the security services turn on them altogether.
Not for the first time we are being presented with contradictory and absurd information which I’m sure the British public will continue to hold up for ridicule, after all what’s wrong with presenting absurd conspiracy theories when the government produces them itself?
The death of David Kelly was a watershed in Britain as it triggered the muzzling of the BBC by the government and to this day I have not yet met a single person who does not believe he was murdered by government agents, so true or not the cycle of cynical mistrust has been turning since then and government spin is increasingly derided by the public.
I really hope that the British people will live up to your high opinion of us but I worry that we are not what we used to be - fingers crossed.
Knowing the corrupt bastards they have chosen to omit what we really suspect.