LONDON, Jan 29: The British spy agency, MI5, was investigating the significance of a training camp established in Northern Pakistan where July 7, 2005 London suicide bombers visited along with other British terrorists in July 2003, said a report by the Sunday Times.
The newspaper story was based on a leaked secret eight page report prepared by the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC) entitled ‘London Attacks: the Emerging Picture’. The report was delivered to Prime Minister Tony Blair and senior ministers in October, the newspaper said.
The spy agency report said that it “strongly suspects” one man’s visit to Pakistan was relevant to one plot.
Among the tentative findings of the MI5 report, it was said that networks of Iraqi jihadis had formed linkages with terrorists in Pakistan and were attempting to bring a terrorist campaign to Britain.
The report said MI5 was investigating a group of “Al Qaeda facilitators” in the West Midlands, led by a British citizen of Syrian origin, who were believed to be trying to extend the insurgency in Iraq to Britain.
“The main West Midlands suspect is said to have recruited at least one man to lead a terrorist cell and sent him to a terror camp in Pakistan for training,” the MI5 report was quoted as saying.
“The suspect is connected to a number of extremist groups and networks, including Al Qaeda, as well as militant Kashmiri and north African groups. He has played a major role in facilitating support for the Iraq jihad,” said the report.
According to the newspaper, MI5 believed that the suspect directed a second man, an Iraqi, who arranged a trip to a Pakistan training camp for the leader of a separate British terrorist cell.
MI5 believed the two men may have been working ultimately for another West Midlands-based suspect who has links to Al Qaeda in Pakistan. The report revealed that the intelligence services hade found “growing evidence of a wider extremist network in West Yorkshire associated with the 7/7 bombers”.
It said MI5 originally believed the July 7 gang had acted alone but the view had changed.
“There is a distinct possibility that the Stepford Four (July 7 bombers) were not acting alone and that fellow accomplices are still at large,” the paper said while quoting the MI5 report.
The report said the attacks were “likely” to have been supported by Al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan, revealing that in May and June 2005, “there were repeated phone calls from public telephone boxes in Pakistan to mobile telephones recovered at a ‘bomb factory’ in Leeds” where the July 7 rucksack bombs were made. It said the gang’s Pakistani contact “is likely to have been providing support, advice and/or direction”.
However, the report also admitted the limitations of investigations by MI5 and said, “We know little about what three of the bombers did in Pakistan, when attack planning began, how and when the attackers were recruited, the extent of any external direction or assistance and the extent and role of any wider network.”
“We do not know how, when and with whom the attack planning originated. And we still do not know what degree of external assistance either group had. Whilst investigations are progressing, there remain significant gaps in our knowledge,” the MI5 report as quoted in the paper said.
