LONDON, May 1: Survivors of the London suicide bombings in 2005 led new calls on Tuesday for an independent inquiry into the blasts after freshly disclosed details showed intelligence agents knew the men were plotting an attack.

Links between two of the subway attackers and a group planning a spree of bombings across southern England were revealed on Monday, after five of the bomb gang were jailed for life. The ties between the men had been kept secret to ensure a fair trial.

Authorities first insisted the attackers were unconnected and unlikely to have been directed by overseas terror chiefs. However, their common ties to radical preachers, rogue mosques and Al Muhajiroun, an Islamist group now banned in Britain, suggest the country’s suburban terror cells were more closely tied than authorities previously believed.

Armed with the fresh details, relatives of the 52 commuters killed in the July 7, 2005 blasts, survivors of the blasts and opposition lawmakers levelled a fresh demand for an independent inquiry.

“We want answers, we want an independent inquiry,” said Jacqui Putnam, a survivor. The group delivered a letter to Home Secretary John Reid asking him to sanction a review. Reid previously rejected an inquiry as too costly and likely to distract officials from counterterrorism work.

Survivors said they were appalled by the admission by Britain’s domestic spy agency MI5, that it had watched transit bombing ringleader Mohammed Siddique Khan and an accomplice in early 2004.

The men were tailed on at least four occasions as agents investigated the fertiliser cell --- followed on freeways, pictured mingling with terror suspects at a service station and heard in bugged telephone conversations vowing to murder non-Muslims.But the agency --- which also placed a tracking device in Khan’s car --- believed they were planning attacks overseas and did not rank them as a priority.

American radical-turned-FBI informant Mohammed Junaid Babar said Khan and fertiliser plot ringleader Omar Khyam both met Abdul al-Hadi al-Iraqi, an Al Qaeda operative now in US custody, at militia camps in Pakistan.

Babar said Al Iraqi sat at the apex of a terror chain stretching from Pakistan’s Himalayan foothills to rural England. “The ultimate emir (prince) on top was Hadi,” Babar testified.

Among men who reported to Hadi and directed British cells was a taxi-driver from Luton, northwest of London, security officials said.

His bugged conversations with Khan and Khyam tipped authorities off to the fertiliser plot in 2003, officials said, but ---crucially --- not to the transit bombings.

The revelations suggest Britain underestimated the extent to which terror cells receive outside support, said London-based ex-US intelligence officer Bob Ayers.

“Britain’s government is now very quickly realising that the support infrastructure for these cells is in place and that it’s transnational,” Ayers said. “They’ve had a 180 degree turnaround in their thinking.”—AP