David Leppard and Dipesh Gadher
Detectives hunting the West End car bombers believe the suspects are most likely to be home-grown extremists linked to an overlapping network of terrorist cells implicated in previous plots against British targets.
Some may be known to police and be on the run after escaping Home Office control orders.
Those in the frame may be associates of the so-called Crevice gang, which planned to attack the Ministry of Sound nightclub in central London and the Bluewater shopping mall in Kent.
Members of the five-man cell, who were jailed for life in April, were directed by “core” Al-Qaeda figures after training in terror camps in Pakistan.
The brother of one jailed gang member, who has been on the run since breaching a government-imposed control order six weeks ago, is said to have been keen to bomb a nightclub.
“There is a real possibility the suspects may have a connection through a family of cells with the Crevice gang,” said a senior government security official. “It is very possible these people met each other at training camps.”
The suspects may also have drawn inspiration from another cell led by Dhiren Barot, an Al-Qaeda “general”, who drew up sophisticated plans to target London hotels and office buildings by parking limousines packed with gas canisters in underground car parks.
Barot, now serving 30 years in prison, outlined his plot in a document called Gas Limos Project, which he prepared for Al-Qaeda leaders in Pakistan.
In the document, which was found on a laptop computer, Barot wrote: “Place 12-13 full size cylinders in each limo. A few should be sprayed yellow because yellow cylinders in the West signify toxic gas.
“This will aid to spread terror and chaos when the emergency service teams arrive. Underneath and around the cylinders generously place some loose pieces of charcoal (that have been presoaked in petrol). Place a 10-litre petrol can containing nails next to each cylinder.”
Barot envisaged detonating the cars with grenades or pipe bombs. “Estimated casualties to be hundreds if the building collapses,” he said.
Security officials insist there was no intelligence pointing to a car bomb attack in the West End. But there are concerns that extremists who were on the surveillance back-burner could have escaped their attentions.
“They are saying this is leftfield, that it came out of the blue,” said a senior Whitehall official. “What that means is they think it’s possible that these were people they have been aware of who suddenly did this.
“It may be that these are people that they know about – but just hadn’t realised what they were up to.”
Patrick Mercer, the Tory MP and security expert, said: “The real nervousness for the agencies is that these may be people they know but haven’t picked up. It’s happened before.
“It calls into question the strategy about leaving these people in play and not arresting them.”
Such concerns reflect the fall-out from the investigation into the July 7 attacks two years ago, which killed 52 people.
The authorities initially claimed the suicide bombers were unknown “clean skins”, but it soon emerged that Mohammad Sidique Khan, the 7/7 leader, and Shehzad Tanweer had been under surveillance a year earlier.
The two bombers were photographed at meetings with Omar Khyam, the leader of the Crevice gang that was plotting to detonate a fertiliser bomb.
Bugged conversations of the Crevice cell revealed the plotters’ disdain for nightclubs. Discussing the Ministry of Sound, one gang member said: “No one can put their hands up and say they are innocent...those slags dancing around.”
A key member of the Crevice gang was Anthony Garcia. During his trial, an Al-Qaeda supergrass revealed that Garcia’s brother, Lamine Adam, had allegedly wanted to bomb a nightclub and was seeking a formula for explosives.
The supergrass’s testimony was not considered strong enough for prosecution. However, Adam, 26, and his younger brother, Ibrahim, 20, were placed on control orders in February 2006 on the grounds that they planned to kill British soldiers serving abroad.
The two brothers and a friend, Cerie Bullivant, 24, who was put on a control order last July, went on the run six weeks ago. Police think they may have slipped abroad, but they cannot rule out that the trio could still pose a threat within the UK.
Lord Carlile, the government’s terrorism watchdog, said: “I would certainly not view this as a failure by the authorities in any sense,” he said. “Looking for home-grown cells is like looking for a needle in a haystack.”
Baptism of fire for security trio
It was a baptism of fire for Britain’s new anti-terror team.
Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, was woken by an early morning phone call on Friday alerting her to the attempted attack. She chaired a meeting of the Cobra emergency response committee in her first full day in the job.
Admiral Sir Alan West, 59, the former head of the Royal Navy, is the Home Office security minister. A hero of the Falklands war where his frigate, HMS Ardent, was sunk in an Argentine attack, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.
Lord Stevens, 64, former commissioner of the Metropolitan police, is the government’s new adviser on international security. Best known internationally for leading the Operation Paget inquiry into the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997, which concluded it was an accident.
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July 1, 2007 -- The terrorists who packed two Mercedes-Benzes with explosives and left them in busy central London, and those who drove a flaming SUV into a Glasgow airport, are likely homegrown extremists directed by al Qaeda, it was reported yesterday.
As British officials called in the army's special forces to help hunt the suspects, detectives linked them to a known terror cell called the Crevice Gang, the Sunday Times of London reported.
The five men who made up the cell were jailed in April for plotting to attack London's Ministry of Sound nightclub and a shopping mall in Kent.
But sources told the paper that the brother of one of the jailed Crevice terrorists shook off his surveillance and is on the run. Apparently, he has always wanted to bomb a nightclub, the sources said.
"There is a real possibility the suspects may have a connection through a family of cells with the Crevice Gang," a senior government security official told the newspaper.
It has previously been reported that the London terror plotters were associated with al Qaeda operative Dhiren Barot, who admitted plotting to blow up the New York Stock Exchange, along with sites in London.
Barot drew up "sophisticated plans" to pack limousines with gas canisters and leave them in underground garages.
The Independent reported yesterday that police think that the first explosion outside of the Tiger Tiger club may have been intended to draw panicking revelers out on to the streets, where they would be have been joined by emergency services.
Then another, bigger bomb in the second Mercedes among them could have been triggered - causing hundreds of deaths and even taking out a building.
Scotland Yard has so far identified three suspects in the foiled attack from surveillance cameras placed around London's streets, according to several media reports.
The Sunday Times also quoted security sources that said Metropolitan cops and domestic spy agency, MI5, had called in the army's Special Reconnaissance Regiment to hunt the car-bomb suspects.
By Simon Bucks, Associate Editor, Sky News (Online)
So M15 is in the dock for failing to stop the 7/7 bombers.
The end of the Crevice trial yesterday, which saw five British Asians jailed for planning to cause death and destruction with fertilizer bombs, should have been a good day for the Security Service.
Instead, they are facing new criticism for failing to follow up links between the Crevice plotters and two of the 7/7 bombers.
Is it fair? M15 argue they didn’t follow up the connections because the pair were never identified as being connected with the fertilizer bomb plot, and instead appeared to be petty fraudsters. Maybe: transcripts of conversations between the Crevice gang leader Omar Khyam and the 7/7 bomber Mohammed Sidique Khan records them discussing “operations” and visits to Pakistan training camps.
But there is another side to the argument. M15 remains a relatively small organisation. It cannot possibly put under surveillance everyone who comes into its sights. It is on record as saying that is dealing with more plots than ever, and they are more complex than ever. It has to prioritise. If the government gave M15 more cash to hire more agents, and put more people under surveillance, would that make us safer? And what would be the price?
The logical conclusion of that process is a Stasi style intelligence service, with agents in every street, neighbours spying on neighbours and everyone mistrusting each other.
The 7th July bombings were dreadful atrocities, and it is not surprising that the relatives of those who died want a public inquiry into exactly what happened. It was an especially black day for M15, but set against the successes the intelligence services have had in foiling terrorist plots, is the level of criticism levelled at them proportionate to their failings?
Written by Sky News, 01/05/2007 at:
http://skynews6.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/05/m15_in_the_dock.html
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The jihadi house parties of hate
From The Sunday Times.
Britain’s terror network offered an easy target the security services missed
The barbecue was in full swing. Young men spilt out onto the street from the modest garden in a north London suburb and the air was thick with Urdu and heavily accented English.
The invitation had been specific: no wives or girlfriends. The party was to raise funds for a jihadi training camp: “Make sure your pockets are full.”
The party, held four years ago within a few hundred yards of the Metropolitan police training centre in Hendon, helped to forge alliances among British Islamist radicals that were to be put to murderous effect.
By the end of the evening £3,500 had been raised for a camp at Malakand on the Afghan-Pakistan border.
Within weeks two of the most dangerous British-born jihadi terrorists — Mohammad Sidique Khan, leader of the 7/7 suicide bombers, and Omar Khyam, leader of the so-called Crevice gang — were learning to make bombs at Malakand.
Details of the party were disclosed this weekend by one of the guests, Hassan Butt, a former associate of the Islamist radicals who has turned against violence.
Butt’s account both illustrates the extent of the jihadist network in Britain and throws harsh new light on the failure of the British security services to catch Khan before his 7/7 operation in London in which 52 people died.
Posted on 2:11 AM by Esmerelda Weatherwax
Revealed: deadly links of UK's Islamic terror network
A linked article from The Sunday Times.
A former Islamic militant has disclosed for the first time the extent of the Al-Qaeda terror network in Britain.
Hassan Butt, who was stabbed in the street recently after publicly denouncing fundamentalist violence, revealed that more than 100 jihadis held an Al-Qaeda summit in London four years ago to coordinate their British activities into a single force.
Among those present was Mohammed Junaid Babar, a US citizen who later became a supergrass after being arrested by the FBI. His evidence was crucial to the conviction last week of the Islamist “Crevice gang”, who had plotted to set off bombs in London and Kent.
After the summit, said Butt, he drove to Batley in West Yorkshire with Babar who directed him to the home of Mohammad Sidique Khan, who later led the bombers who hit London on July 7, 2005. Butt said he got the impression that Babar knew Khan well.
This disclosure of the supergrass’s close link to Khan will increase pressure on MI5 to explain why the bomber was not arrested and the 7/7 outrage prevented.
This weekend fresh doubts were raised over the official account of how much the intelligence services knew about the 7/7 bombers before their suicide attacks.
The rest is here. Read the other article about Hassan Butt below.
Posted on 2:15 AM by Esmerelda Weatherwax
Unholy row at clergy soccer game
A friendship-building football match between Muslim and Christian clergy in Norway was called off after a row over the participation of women players.
Muslim Imams had refused to play against women because it went against their beliefs about close physical contact with the opposite sex. But when the church decided to drop its women players, the priests' team captain walked out in protest.
The game was meant to be an enjoyable end to a day-long conference in Oslo.
Members of the two faiths had been discussing ways of encouraging greater inter-faith dialogue at the "Shoulder to Shoulder" event.
Just hours before the match, the church released a statement saying it had been called off. "We realise now that it will be wrong to have a priest team without women," the statement said.
"The reactions we have had today shows us that this is being interpreted as a gender-political issue. This is why we cannot go through with the soccer match."
Mr Fykse Tveit said the outcome had not been solely negative. "Both sides have learned to better understand our cultures and we have had an open discussion."
Which I hope means that the Christians have learnt how misogynist Islam is and the Muslims have learnt that we are wiseing up to them.
Posted on 2:55 AM by Esmerelda Weatherwax
Teachers backed over Muslim wear
Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer will tell headteachers common sense decisions stopping Muslim pupils wearing Islamic dress would not breach human rights.
He is expected to tell the National Association of Headteachers' annual conference that teachers who act properly should not fear legal action.
He will back the decision of a Luton school to stop a Muslim girl wearing the jilbab, a long gown.
Lord Falconer will tell the conference in Bournemouth human rights are based on freedom, equality, tolerance and respect which are truly British values. They are not at odds with common sense decisions, he will say.
The Lord Chancellor will argue those who act properly in response to issues such as those raised in Luton should not fear a legal challenge under the Human Rights Act.
Let us hope that he also supports Judges when they direct that veils be removed in court.
Posted on 3:00 AM by Esmerelda Weatherwax
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