Britain foils many terror plots, but missed one
Major terror trial reveals that two of the July 7 subway bombers were tracked before the attack.
from the May 2, 2007 edition
Page 3 of 3
Renewed calls for 7/7 inquiry
Survivors of 7/7 are using the new revelation to renew calls for a proper public inquiry into the atrocity. And parliament's intelligence and security committee, which published a report on 7/7 last year, is to review its findings in the light of the new evidence.
Khan cropped up in MI5 surveillance at least four times more than a year before he and three other bombers killed 52 people on London's transit system on July 7, 2005. During an enormous yearlong investigation said to cost £50 million ($100 million) – Operation Crevice, which homed in on 55 figures considered dangerous – he was tailed as he drove hundreds of miles around the country with Mr. Tanweer; he was bugged talking about jihad to the ringleader of the fertilizer bomb plot, Omar Khyam; and he was even photographed.
MI5 says Khan and Tanweer were "unidentified contacts" of those involved in the fertilizer bomb plot, not central players. It said the pair appeared as "petty fraudsters" and said the intelligence collected on them "gave no indication that they posed a terrorist threat."
Its arguments have not persuaded everybody. "MI5 has got a great deal of explaining to do and so has the current home secretary and the previous home secretary," says Patrick Mercer, a Conservative MP and security expert.
He said that aside from explaining why the pair were allowed to vanish, security chiefs would have to clarify why, in the immediate aftermath of 7/7, they told the country that the bombers were "clean skins," completely unknown to the authorities.
"What on earth were intelligence agencies doing allowing the home secretary at the time to start saying these attacks had come out of the blue?" Mercer asks. "Phrases like 'clean skins' were being used, when patently these people had been under surveillance."
Uptick in terrorism
According to the State Department's "Country Reports on Terrorism 2006," released Monday:
• Terrorist attacks rose to 14,000 last year, up 3,000 from 2005, and killed 20,000 – an increase of 5,800. [Editor's note: The original version incorrectly stated the number of terrorist attacks in 2005.]
• Of these, 45 percent of attacks and 65 percent of deaths occurred in Iraq.
• Muslims accounted for more than 50 percent of the 58,000 total killed or wounded in terrorist attacks in 2006.
• Iran remains the "most active state sponsor" of terror.
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