LONDON, May 11: Here are the main points of the report into the London bombings:
The men who carried out the attack were named as Mohammad Sidique Khan, Shehzad Tanweer and Hasib Hussain — three British-born men of Pakistan origin from around the northern English city of Leeds — and Germaine Lindsay, born in Jamaica but raised in Britain and a convert to Islam.
The report carries a photograph of the attackers and a map of the route the three in Leeds took to meet Lindsay at a car park in Luton, north of London, before they travelled by train together to King’s Cross Station in London.
Three explosions occurred on the London Underground at 8.50am, followed by a fourth at 9.47am on the upper deck of a double-decker bus. The blasts are pinpointed on a map of the city.
In a detailed timeline, the report runs through the unfolding response by the authorities to the attacks, including a high-level meeting of the Cabinet Office Briefing Rooms (COBR), eventually attended by Prime Minister Tony Blair who had to travel from a G8 meeting in Scotland.
Demonstrating the size of the investigation, it said the authorities have taken over 12,500 statements; there are over 26,000 exhibits of which over 5,000 are being forensically examined; they have seized 142 computers and there are more than 6,000 hours of closed circuit television footage.
The report details what is known about the backgrounds of the four bombers in a bid to work out what motivated them:
Khan: It names Khan as the apparent ringleader, who made repeated trips to Pakistan where he is thought to have been converted to a more extreme form of Islam.
Tanweer: He is said to have taken religion seriously from an early age but showed no sign of extremism. From the middle of 2002 religion become the main focus of his life, though no one close to him realised his strict religious observance had turned to extremism.
Hussain: The report said he wrote on a schoolbook, ‘Al Qaeda No Limits’ some time after a trip to Saudi Arabia in early 2002 to take part in the Hajj pilgrimage. He openly supported for the terror network at school and regarded the gang behind the September 11 attack on the United States as martyrs.
Lindsay: Seen as the outsider of the group, he was believed to have been strongly influenced by an extremist Muslim preacher, Abdallah al Faisal, who has now been jailed in Britain.
The three Leeds men frequented the same mosques, youth clubs, gyms and an Islamic bookshop in the town of Beeston. The report said it was likely this is where they met.
It is unclear where Lindsay met Khan but they were described as ‘close associates’ towards the end of 2004.
The perceived injustices carried out by western countries against Muslims is seen as the main motivation behind the attack, the report said, citing a video made by Khan before the attack, which was later broadcast on Al-Jazeera.
The Home Office document repeats an observation made in the parliamentary report about the likelihood that Khan and Tanweer had contact with Al-Qaeda members during trips to Pakistan. It noted that Khan probably made his martyrdom video on one of these trips.
The report mentions a claim by Al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri that the terror group “launched” the July 7 attacks.
It says in response: “There is as yet no firm evidence to corroborate this claim or the nature of Al Qaeda support, if there was any.”—AFP
