I thought I'd post a couple of stories of interest from the Times of London. Here's the first:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...5561_1,00.html
July 08, 2005
Was it work of al-Qaeda sleeper cell or home-grown terrorists?
By Sean O’Neill and Daniel McGrory
If investigators can link the explosives they are examining to terror attacks elsewhere it will give detectives vital clues in tracking the network
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IDENTIFYING the type of explosives used in the four London bomb attacks could provide police with the key to tracing the terrorists who carried out the attacks.
Possible evidence was found in the hours after the blasts at Aldgate Underground station and at the scene of the bus bomb in Tavistock Place.
If the explosive type can be linked to al-Qaeda attacks elsewhere it will give detectives vital clues to the network from which the bombers stemmed.
Investigators will also be examining thousands of hours of closed-circuit television footage from street and station cameras. Police officers will try to spot suspects carrying rucksacks or holdalls on to trains and possibly leaving at another station without their luggage. The study of security film may tell officers conclusively whether they are dealing with suicide bombers or terrorists who planted their bombs and escaped, possibly to strike again.
It appears that there was no intelligence — either through undercover agents or electronic surveillance — that these attacks were likely.
The analysis of CCTV is a basic investigatory step taken in the first hours of a typical murder inquiry. Murder squad detectives have been drafted in from across London to help the Anti-Terrorist Squad.
A Scotland Yard source said of the attacks: “This is a total surprise. We have been priding ourselves on our progress in the last few years but tonight we are having to go right back to basics.
“There is no intelligence; we are just not into that world.”
Forensic science analysis of the bus bomb scene offers the inquiry team “massive potential for recovery”. The likelihood that the bomber died in the blast and the fact that it was above ground raises the chances of finding valuable evidence.
British scenes-of-crime officers are renowned for their ability to recover and preserve evidence. They will divide the area around the attack into sectors and collect every piece of material before reconstructing the scene in an aircraft hangar and making a detailed analysis.
The shattered Tube train carriages will be removed from the tunnels and taken to locations where they can be stripped down and examined.
The bombers, who no one doubts are part of an Islamist group, could have emerged via two routes. The threat that the UK authorities know most about is that which comes from Algerian and North African networks known to have based themselves in London since the 1990s. The al-Qaeda team that carried out the Madrid train bombings had these origins.
But in the past year British police have encountered growing numbers of British-born terrorist suspects — recruited and indoctrinated here but trained overseas.
Whatever their path to jihad, they are unknown to the police and security services and unless vital clues are unearthed at the crime scenes will be difficult to find. The masterminds of the attacks — who will not have risked their own lives — are likely to have left Britain days ago or to have planned them from overseas.
Scotland Yard, despite recent successes in thwarting attacks, had cautioned that one day terrorists would succeed in hitting London. Vigilance had been its mantra.
Yet counter-terrorist chiefs were caught unawares. London was not on its highest state of alert and many senior security figures had been deployed to protect the G8 summit.
There was no indication that the series of attacks was coming. Police sources said last night that known terrorist suspects in Britain were under observation at the time of the bombings and were not involved.
They suggested that the attacks were the work of totally unknown attackers. One source said: “It’s back to square one. We have to start again.”
There is little doubt, however, that they were carried out by terrorists linked to or inspired by al-Qaeda. The blasts bore the characteristics of an al-Qaeda operation: they were simple and well co-ordinated. The timing, too, was crucial to achieving maximum impact, coinciding with the G8 summit.
One al-Qaeda website made a claim of responsibility that some anti-terrorist experts saw as credible. It stated: “The time of revenge against the Zionist crusader British Government has come. This is in response to the butchery that Great Britain is committing in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
The similarities with the attacks in Madrid in March last year, in which 191 people died, are striking. The train bombs in Spain were a co-ordinated series of explosions aimed at commuters during the morning rush hour. The attacks in London followed a similar pattern, exploiting the vulnerability of a huge public transport system.
The bomb on the No 30 bus at Tavistock Place seemed last night to have been the work of a suicide bomber, but it was not clear whether the three devices detonated on Tube trains were “martyrdom operations” or — as in Madrid — triggered by timing devices.
Spanish security services said they had been warning Scotland Yard that London might suffer a Madrid-style attack. Spanish investigators found links between al-Qaeda operatives in Madrid and radicals who lived in North London.
Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, a Syrian al-Qaeda veteran believed to have masterminded the Madrid bombings, lived in London in the mid-1990s and is still at large. Spanish authorities have claimed that Nasar, 46, established “sleeper cells” in Britain, France and Italy that could be activated at his choosing.
Three men are in prison in London fighting extradition to Spain for their alleged roles in the bombings.
A number of other terrorist suspects linked to the Madrid attacks remain at large. One key figure is thought to have fled to London.
Another suspect, Hassan Akcha, whose two brothers are accused of being part of the bombing team, disappeared from his home in Stepney immediately after the Madrid attacks.
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