Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) twice warned British intelligence about the terrorist threat from a group of British men – one of whom would later take part in the 7/7 suicide bombings of London’s transport network – living in Lahore in 2003, The Times reports. “There is no question that 7/7 could have and should have been stopped. British agencies did not follow some of the information we gave to them,” a high-ranking ISI official told The Times.
This information related to a group of British men who took rooms in Sufi House, No 13 Ilyas Street, Lahore, in the summer of 2003. Says The Times report: “These young men were no ordinary students. They had come to Pakistan to study violent jihad.”
Among those staying at Sufi House that summer were Omar Khyam, and Mohammad Siddique Khan from Yorkshire, who would on July 7, 2005, lead Britain’s first suicide bomb cell, which killed 52 people in London. The Times learnt that Khan gave immigration officers the telephone number of the Sufi House as his contact point on arrival in Pakistan that summer. “The mass murder may have been prevented had intelligence agencies picked up on the trail of clues and connections that identified Khan as a terrorist in the making,” says The Times.
Khyam was later arrested and tried for plotting a bombing campaign in Britain. He and four others were convicted and sentenced to 35-40 years in prison on Monday. Khan and Khyam had attended terrorist camps before they met at Islamabad airport in July 2003, on their way to the same jihad training expedition.
In Ilyas Street the neighbours also had their suspicions, and called police after hearing a series of late-night explosions. One woman said: “We knew what they were doing and we were afraid at those boys being here, but we couldn’t do anything about it.”
The group told police that a propane gas cylinder had exploded. The officers alerted their superiors, who ordered a surveillance operation. The authorities became aware that the group had travelled to the mountainous Malakand region, “where Al Qaeda maintains training camps and compounds,” says The Times. Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, the Al Qaeda commander who was transferred to Guantanamo Bay last week, directed their training and attack planning.
Intelligence sources in Pakistan told the newspaper that the group was taught how to manufacture and detonate homemade explosives using ammonium nitrate and aluminium powder. In Lahore members of the group were observed making regular visits to the Gohar Centre, an office complex where the extremist group al-Muhajiroun rented space. Pakistani intelligence sources told The Times that they reported their concerns to British agencies because they were satisfied that the group was not a threat to Pakistan but was intent on carrying out attacks back in Britain.
The report says Khan returned to Britain in August 2003, and after that police missed several clues as to his future intentions as they carried out a surveillance operation of Khyam and his gang.