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| Britain |
| Primed bombs could point to more suicide attacks |
| 2005-07-19 |
| The London suicide bombers had enough extra explosives in their car to mount two further waves of terror attacks. Police are investigating the possibility that up to nine bombs, primed and ready to use, could have been left in the hired Nissan Micra used by the gang. Forensic experts will today continue to examine the remains of the car left outside Luton station when the men caught a train to King's Cross. Bomb disposal teams carried out nine controlled explosions on the vehicle using, it is believed, a procedure for dealing with bombs already fitted with detonators. Scientific confirmation that the bombs were primed would underline fears that a second or even third terror cell was planning another wave of atrocities. A mysterious fifth person was seen with the four bombers and one theory is that he had been due to return to the car and deliver its deadly cargo elsewhere, but for some reason changed his mind. The bombers had bought a day-long parking ticket, displayed on the windscreen. Three of the men had driven in the car from West Yorkshire. Their rucksack bombs are thought to have been made in the bath of a house in Leeds. The gang could have placed their explosives in plastic containers bought from a Leeds garden centre, police believe. The Daily Mail understands that a receipt found in the wreckage of one of the blasts led officers directly to The Range Home and Leisure Garden Centre at Tulip Retail Park. This modern industrial estate is a few hundred yards from Beeston, the multicultural red-brick area of Leeds which increasingly looks like the seedbed for the horrific terror attacks, with at least three of the suicide bombers being at the centre of radical Islamic groups there. It appears that one of the men went to the Range store a couple of days before the July 7 bombings and bought several large plastic containers for a few pounds each. Police believe the 10lb of explosive, detonators, and any accompanying shrapnel, would have been placed into each of the containers, which were then placed into each of the bombers' rucksacks before they left on their mission. Last night security sources stressed that police had still to prove conclusively that several bombs had been left in the Nissan Micra hire car. It is unclear whether any traces of explosives were found in the red Fiat left at the station by a fourth member of the cell, Jamaican-born Germaine 'Jamal' Lindsay. Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair has warned that further terrorist attacks are likely and that other Al Qaeda trained Britons are at large. And officials said yesterday that three of the bombers - Mohammed Sidique Khan, 30, Shahzad Tanweer, 22, and Hasib Hussain, 18 - were all in Pakistan at the same time earlier this year. It emerged that Khan and Tanweer both spent several weeks in Pakistan and that in February Tanweer met with a leader of the outlawed Jaish-e-Muhammad, which has links to Al Qaeda and a wave of suicide bombings. More than a dozen arrests were made in Pakistan yesterday by police probing possible links to the London bombings. Pakistan's officials have also been sent a list of 12 Britons of Pakistani origin who have vanished in recent years with a request for any available information. Anti-terror investigators are carrying out an exhaustive trawl of telephone numbers used by the gang - and calls they received - in the hope of hunting down accomplices. MI5 is reviewing all its Islamist terror investigations since 2000. Officials have confirmed that Khan, a special needs teacher of Dewsbury, had been the subject of a 'routine threat assessment' by MI5 after his name cropped up in an investigation last year into a foiled bomb plot. He is said to have met one of the men linked to that plot but a 'quick assessment' at the time judged he was 'on the periphery' and posed no threat. The decision not to follow up the link, however weak, and not to monitor a low-level Al Qaeda suspect who entered Britain through Felixstowe and left from Heathrow two weeks later, shortly before the attack, are likely to feature in any review of intelligence failures leading to the bombings on three Tube trains and a bus. The Egyptian biochemist linked to the bombers was arrested for suspected terrorism in 1997, it is claimed. Magdy Al Nashar, 33, was seized by Egyptian police after the massacre of 58 tourists in Luxor, according to neighbours of his home in Cairo. He was quizzed by Egyptian security services for two weeks but released without charge. The chemistry PhD student is being questioned by Scotland Yard detectives at the headquarters of the Egyptian security services in Cairo. He helped Jamal Lindsay rent a flat in Leeds last month but returned to Egypt a week before the attacks. One theory is that Al Nashar provided the expertise in making the bombs. But he has denied playing any part in the atrocities, telling police he arrived in Egypt for a holiday on June 30. His family claim that Al Nashar, a divorcee, returned to look for a new wife. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #1 Most interesting. If the police do find a single primed bomb, let alone nine, then that suggests that not all went according to plan. If it was indeed planned as a suicide mission, whether the boomers knew or not, additional explosives wouldn't have been left behind. These bombs were reportedly at or less than 5 kg. Each bomber could have easily added an additional bomb to his payload, if all terrorists did not meet at the rendevous point. I believe there can be only two explanations: 1)There was a mistake in setting the timers. In a failed terrorist attack in the Philippenes in early 1991, terrorists working on behalf of hte Iraqi government set thier bomb timers to minutes instead of hours. You can imagine the results. It became known in the CIA as "Operation Dogmeat". Such a mistake might could imply that the bombs, or at least the timers, were prepared across the channel. I recall an instance where a Palistinian terrorist set a bomb to his time, forgetting that Israel had moves to daylight savings time ahead of the Palestinian areas. 2)The plot was stopped in progress by the authorities. The Israeli warning was literally last-minute. However, this still may have allowed UK security forces to stop some bombers from reaching their targets, indeed from reaching their bombs. We may have a reportof this. The two scenarios I have laid out are not mutually exclusive, e.g. Four bombers did not return due to "short rounds" and the fifth man was intercepted. |
| Posted by: Rory B. Bellows 2005-07-19 19:52 |