There is so much that does not make sense in the story of 7th July 2005 and the aftermath (an incident originally reported by the media as "power surges"), that it is difficult not to conclude that the whole thing stinks to high heaven...
Source:
Global Research
The 7/7 London Bombings and MI5′s “Stepford Four” Operation: How the
2005 London Bombings Turned every Muslim into a “Terror Suspect”
Nine Years Ago, the 7/7 London Bombing
This article is dedicated to former South Yorkshire terror analyst
Tony Farrell who lost his job but kept his integrity, and with thanks to
the documentation provided by the July 7th Truth Campaign
“:One intriguing aspect of the London
Bombing report is the fact that the MI5 codename for the event is
“Stepford”. The four “bombers” are referred to as the “Stepford four”.
Why is this the case? … the MI5
codename is very revealing in that it suggests the operation was a
carefully coordinated and controlled one with four compliant and
malleable patsies following direct orders.
Now if MI5 has no idea who was behind
the operation or whether there were any orders coming from a
mastermind, why would they give the event the codename “Stepford”? ” (Steve Watson, January 30, 2006 Prison Planet)
Background
The word was out that there was easy money to be made by Muslims
taking part in an emergency- preparedness operation. Mohammad Sidique
Khan — better known by his western nickname “Sid” – had been approached
by his contact, probably Haroon Rashid Aswat who was in town, about a
big emergency preparedness operation that was looking for local
Pakistanis who might take the part of pretend “suicide bombers” for the
enactment. The call was somewhat unusual: not just anyone was to be
asked. The people running this wanted “young men who were
conservatively and cleanly dressed and probably had some higher
education”. It looked as if it might be one of the ones related to Visor
Consultants, which had a history of holding such events. Sid’s wife,
Hasina Patel, had been experiencing complications in her second
pregnancy; he wondered if she might be better off getting help through
expensive, private doctors. He agreed to take part in it and to recruit
others.
Did he smell a rat? Khan asked only men of Pakistani descent who
were single. His friend and younger sidekick Shezad Tanweer, who had
just graduated from university, agreed. He had just racked up a big car
repair bill on his beloved red Mercedes and could use the money.
Eighteen-year old Hasib Hussain was a good guy who was awaiting his
exams for entry into Leeds University that September; he could use the
money for a car he had been looking at for the commute. Ejaz Fiaz, who
was known for sometimes dyeing his hair blonde for parties, also
agreed. He was a bit flakey but he seemed to fit the bill. Khan gave
their names as volunteers.
What could go wrong? Aswat was well connected with British security
and had to be reliable. But he had felt somewhat compromised by his and
Tanweer’s work with security people the previous year. No one was more
patriotic than he and Tanweer. They loved their country and wanted to
help their government in any way. They had allowed themselves to be
taped in 2004, but he didn’t feel good about it. He and Tanweer had
been acting in good faith in getting other Muslims, like Omar Khyam, to
talk on tape, but he started to realize that security people were
basically trying to find Muslims to set up for their “War on Terror.” It
had become dangerous for Muslims, even for patriots like him and
Tanweer. He wondered whether the work they did for security had made
them safer or put them in a more precarious position. Tapes the two of
them had made for security guys the year before bothered him, tapes that
had made them look like some kind of crazy terrorists, dressed up half
like pirates and half like Palestinians, with red kifieh’s wrapped
around their heads. They had been talked into being photographed like
that against his better judgement — of course, they had also gotten paid
for it. He hoped that those tapes were lying somewhere, forgotten.
But what could anyone do to him? Everybody knew him; his reputation
was such that he had to be untouchable. He had been featured in a
Sunday Times educational supplement for his excellent work in counseling
children of immigrants; he was known for fixing dangerous situations,
including conflict resolution with troubled teenagers, and he had even
been able to help get kids off drugs. Kids knew he cared about their
problems when he talked to them. He also knew important people and was
even a friend of his Member of Parliament. His mother-in-law knew the
Queen and had special recognition for her progressive work with Muslim
women. If there was anyone in the Muslim community who had to be beyond
any suspicion for any funny business, it had to be him.
Still, it would be naive to think that there were no risks at all
involved. It chilled him, wondering why an emergency preparedness
operation really needed fake “suicide bombers”. Khan got the word out
that he and Hasina had separated. He didn’t want her harassed if
anything went wrong and he was being set up.
Fiaz, the party guy, ended up cancelling out in the end, so Khan
contacted Jamal (or, using his non-Muslim name, Germaine) Lindsay, a
burly, black bodybuilder who had been born in Jamaica, to take Fiaz’s
place. He wasn’t of Pakistani origin, but he was Muslim, anyway. His
wife Samantha Lewthwaite was about to deliver their second child, so
Lindsay was happy to get extra money.
All of the guys volunteering knew the security contacts; it looked as
if it might be fun while they were helping out and making a bit of
extra money.
Timeline
Thursday, July 7th, 2005, is a day people still talk about in London,
England. A meeting of the G8 had started in Gleneagles and London had
just been named as the city for the next summer Olympics. It was all
good.
At about 8:50 am, Scotland Yard’s office put a call through to their
Mossad contacts at the Israeli embassy. (Sheva, 2005) Benjamin
Netanyahu, then serving as Israel’s Finance Minister, was in London to
address a conference near Liverpool Station. They warned the Israeli
officials that explosions were about to happen. Netanyahu remained in
his room that morning.
London’s commuters weren’t as lucky. About five minutes later,
explosions started to rip through London Transport subway cars and
busses. At around 9 a.m., London Transport put out the word that there
seemed to be a “power surge” problem. The Gold Team of London’s
Metropolitan police (the “Met”) shut down the mobile phone system for at
least an hour in central London — which they initially denied.
At 9:47 a.m., an explosion ripped through a No. 30 bus in Tavistock
Square, near the office of the British Medical Association and also the
offices of various security operations. Featuring a giant ad for a
terror film, the bus seemed to be the only one that had strayed off of
its normal route that day. The driver had just stuck his neck out to ask
directions, when the back of the upper deck exploded. Photographs of
the bus show it with varying degrees of damage. (Antagonist, 2005)
Soon after the Bus No. 30 explosion, the public was notified about
that as well as about explosions on subways over the past 50 minutes;
the entire London Transport system would be shut down
There had been reports of explosions in three busses and at least six
subway cars. The subway explosions seemed to be on trains which could
have started from King’s Cross station, although that would not be
clear, given witness accounts, with some travelling in opposite
directions or even on different subway lines. In addition, the FBI’s
Vincent Cannistraro would report the further discovery of two unexploded
bombs as well as mechanical timing devices. (Muir et al, 2005)
At 11 a.m. there were reports about police marksmen having killed
from 1-4 “suicide bombers” at Canary Wharf, a media center. (Shortnews,
2005) The story made it to numerous international newspapers, including
Toronto’s Globe & Mail. (Rook, 2005) The New Zealand Herald also
reported that Canary Wharf workers were told to remain away from windows
for six hours. (N Z Herald, 2005)
By noon,
- Ÿ Police Commissioner Ian Blair noted that there had been “about six” explosions and people were asked to stay out of London.
- Ÿ Also around noon, police inexplicably moved Lindsay’s parked car,
with a valid parking ticket on it, from Luton’s commuter parking lot to
a restricted parking lot at Leighton Buzzard.
- Ÿ And around that time, “Sid” Khan’s wife Hasina Patel called the
police Missing Persons hotline to report her husband missing; she had
lost the baby;
- Ÿ Some hours later, Hasib Hussain’s mother joined 115,000 frantic hotline callers to report Hasib missing.
Later that afternoon, the head of the security-related Visor
Consultants, Peter Power, spoke on radio and TV. Incredibly, his
company had been commissioned to carry out an emergency preparedness
operation for simultaneous bombings at 9 a.m. at the very stations that
were affected by the blasts: Edgware, Aldgate and Piccadilly.
(Statisticians have noted that the probability of that being a
coincidence are close to zero.) Power, it turned out, had practice
making this announcement. He had been part of a mock exercise in April
2004 with the same bombing scenario of three subways and a bus that had
been featured on a BBC Panorama program. He had also taken part in
joint US/UK London emergency preparedness operations as recently as two
months before. (Chossudovsky, 8/8 2005) Power was a veteran of British
intelligence until his founding of Visor Consultants in 1995.
Everyone “knew” it was Al Qaeda
By the end of the day, the government claimed that “Islamic
extremists” were responsible for four explosions in London that morning.
” Prime Minister Tony Blair was “incensed” at the suggestion by the
head of the Opposition that an independent investigation might be
appropriate. Since “everyone” knew that the Muslims had done it, it
would be an insult to the security services, as well as a waste of time
and money. Besides, one month before, The Inquiries Act became law,
giving the Prime Minister full control of all inquiries; a truly
independent inquiry would not be possible.
The London explosions — which Scotland Yard claimed it had had no
advance notice of — was claimed to have killed 52 commuters and injured
700 — 300 of them seriously. The death toll from the bus was initially
declared to be two but mysteriously increased to “13 or 14″; Ian Blair
called it a complicated situation — without further elaboration. It
took several hours for some of the injured to receive help, a possible
factor in the death toll that would be investigated at the 2010 Hallett
Inquest. The government had not only rejected any inquiry, they were
also busy destroying evidence. The bombed vehicles were immediately
taken off and disposed of — apparently sent out of Britain to be sold as
scrap — without any photographs or documentation of the damage. There
were no autopsies of the dead, and no records collected of the
survivors’ injuries for forensic purposes.
The day after the explosions, Friday July 8th, Scotland Yard sent
off its voluminous “Operation Crevice” files on Omar Khyam and his
group, which included information on Khan and Tanweer, to the RCMP in
Canada for the Khawaja trial; not long after that, police removed an
electronic monitoring device from Khan’s car; Hasib Hussain’s exam
results arrived; he had scored high marks in four out of the five exams;
Ÿ
There was a big police operation in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, Lindsay’s home:
Chief Superintendent Simon Chesterman, the most senior
police officer in Bucks, arrived at his office at Aylesbury Police
Station [on Friday, July 8th] to be confronted by Scotland Yard’s
counter terrorism unit. Detectives believed that Lindsay, the Kings
Cross bomber who killed 26 people, was, in fact, a fifth bomber, was
still alive and posed an immediate threat to public safety. Officers had
discovered the car of Germaine Lindsay, who lived in Northern Road,
abandoned at Luton train station, where he travelled to London with
three other bombers. What followed, said Chief Supt Chesterman, was the
biggest police operation he had ever witnessed in 22 years on the
force.” (Bucks Herald, 2005)
Christophe Chaboud, a French anti-terrorism expert called in to help
with the investigation, quickly noted the expertise of the London bombs.
He reported that the bombmaker was sophisticated and the explosives
high-grade, and specifically not homemade. That evaluation was shared
by other explosives experts and confirmed with the identification of an
unusual variant of the military plastic explosive C4 at all four bomb
sites. The remains of timing devices were also found at the subway
blast sites, which meant that no one had to die in those explosions.
Identifying the accused
On Monday, July 11th, 800 detectives gathered to watch 5,000 Closed
Circuit TV (CCTV) tapes to see if they could spot something suspicious:
people walking in with large bags and walking out — perhaps at another
station — without them. The exercise, which looked like mission
impossible, was expected to take a couple of weeks. That night, however,
they claimed they were lucky; they spotted four to five men of Asian
descent — four with identical backpacks — (similar to those used by the
British military) at Luton Station on their way to King’s Cross, which
they took to be the origin point of the subway bombings.
Police claimed they had a “lucky break” with Hussain’s mother’s call,
which put a name to one of the four men shown in the footage, (which
they refused to show to the public.) Police claimed that they then
found the identity cards of three of the men, which they could connect
to the various blasts: a Mohammad Sidique Khan at Edgware, a Shezad
Tanweer at Aldgate, and Hasib Hussain, on the bus. Police claimed that
all were “clean skins” or, unknown to the police. (Scotland Yard was
embarrassed when Nicholas Sarkozy, then French Minister of the Interior,
publicly reminded them that Khan and Tanweer had been known through
their “Operation Crevice”.) After the announcement, police noted that
Khan’s body was not to be found at the Edgware Road site where he was
supposed to have died. (BBC, 7, 2005) Only his ID, which was
subsequently found on the bus and, reportedly also at Aldgate. Tanweer’s
ID, was not only found at Aldgate, but also on the bus, which exploded
almost an hour after he was supposed to have died. Police did not
bother with ID cards of others also found at the sites.
The Piccadilly site’s “fourth bomber”
At first, the identity of the fourth
bomber was a mystery. One paper named Ejaz Fiaz as the fourth bomber,
but noted that the name had not been confirmed. Police claimed that the
body of the fourth “suicide bomber” had been so “shredded” at the
Piccadilly blast that his identity required DNA analysis. The DNA sample
was reportedly taken from the parking stub from the car the police had
towed on July 7th (J7 Profile: Lindsay)
The next morning, Wed., July 13th, The Independent published a
stunning article that challenged the previous day’s DNA claim. “The
suicide plot hatched in Yorkshire” quoted Deputy Assistant Commissioner
Peter Clarke, head of Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorist branch:
“The investigation is moving at great speed. “We are
trying to establish the movements of the suspects in the run-up to last
week’s attack and specifically to establish whether they all died in the
explosions.” The article noted: “The four young British men, all
thought to be of Pakistani origin, are believed to have blown themselves
up with rucksack bombs” … [the body of the fourth bomber] “is thought
to be among the remains in the wreckage on the Piccadilly line…”
(Bennetto, Herbert, 2005) (emphasis added)
On July 12th, police did not appear to have a body to do DNA testing
on! People were wondering why it was taking British police so long to
identify the London bombing victims. While the 190 victims of the
Madrid bombings had been identified within 24 hours, it would take
almost another week, until July 19th, for police to identify the 52
victims of the London bombings. Was it because British police could not
find bodies they were looking for?
On Tuesday, July 12th, Lindsay’s wife Samantha Lewthwaite had called
police to report her husband Germaine (“Jamal”) missing. Police
searched their home immediately. The next day, on July 14th, police
announced that they had Lindsay’s ID and he was the fourth bomber.
Lewthwaite was incredulous and refused to believe the accusation without
DNA proof. The police identification was stunning because they had
been claiming that all of the suspects looked Pakistani; there was no
way anyone could mistake the big, black Lindsay for an Asian. What had
police been looking at?
After Lindsay’s identification was “confirmed”, police provided
Lewthwaite with “protection,” presumably monitoring those who tried to
contact her. They also arrested Naveed Fiaz, Ejaz’s brother. He was
held for one week before being released with no charges.
The Fallout from “Homegrown suicide bombers”
The British public was incensed at the news that British-born
citizens could have turned on them; one Muslim man was kicked to death
soon after that announcement. The public abuse of Pakistani- British
was so ugly that within two months, two thirds of them considered
leaving the UK.
Tony Blair, on the other hand, was riding high. The headlines up to
July 7th described the political “humiliation” Blair faced from his
“anti-terror” (and anti-civil-liberties) legislation. Civil
libertarians had been amassing a public war chest of one million pounds
Sterling to fight his new legislation. Suddenly, he found the vast
majority of the public behind him. Buoyed by the polls, he made vicious
comments about Islam and described further legislation he would like:
criminalizing speech describing why those under occupation might want to
kill themselves; criminalizing the word “martyr”; criminalizing
“extremism” — which seemed to mean only “anti-Israeli”. “The game has
changed,” Blair declared, and he started to produce legislation that
would jettison Britain’s obligations under international humanitarian
law.
Identifications of the accused “confirmed”
The fast identification of the accused seemed to be confirmed by the
police identification of two cars connected to the accused, one in Luton
car park reportedly with “home made” explosives in the trunk, the other
parked in Leighton Buzzard. Police had also raided what they claimed
was the “bomb factory” — a bathtub filled with what they also claimed
was “explosives” in an apartment in Alexandra Grove, Leeds. While
Police Commissioner Ian Blair quickly backed off the identification of
the explosives that police claimed they had found in the Luton car and
Leeds’ bathtub, the story of the London bombs nevertheless changed to
“homemade” — bombs which would have left a TATP residue. Despite the
fact that TATP residue was not identified, the previous identification
of C4 was buried.
The Alexandra Grove apartment with the “bomb factory” bathtub was
found to belong to Magdy al-Nashar, an Egyptian who had just received
his PhD in biochemistry from Leeds University and was on the list of
Leeds’ faculty. He had been forced to leave Britain because of a visa
problem the previous month, but was trying to return to resume his job.
His apartment had been vacant for about a month. Banner headlines
throughout the media claimed that al-Nashar would demonstrate the al
Quada link. It fizzled when he was immediately exonerated, and his name
was forgotten. While the fingerprints of the accused were identified at
their friend al-Nashar’s apartment, they were not found on any
containers of chemicals or “explosives.” (Investigating the terror,
2012)
Police came out with further confirmation of the identity of the
accused; they claimed that they had both CCTV footage as well as
eyewitness confirmation that the accused caught either the 7:40 a.m. or
7:48 a.m. Luton commuter trains to King’s Cross on the morning of July
7th. People wondered why police refused to show any footage that showed
any of the men in London that day. The reason became apparent when
commuters claimed that those trains had not been running on schedule (if
at all) that morning! If the men had expected to catch those
particular trains, they could not have made it onto the exploding subway
cars. The police refusal to show their footage publicly was becoming
increasingly clear: they couldn’t have been looking at CCTV footage! And
their earlier claim that the CCTV footage only showed suspicious Asians
was confirmation of that fact.
Hasib Hussain and the No. 30 bus
Witnesses claimed that the bus explosion seemed to come from under a
seat, possibly from a backpack lying on the ground. The coroner
examining the bodies from the No. 30 bus noted that two bodies were
particularly badly damaged; either one of them might have been
responsible for bringing a bomb. People remarked that a terrorist
trying to inflict maximum damage would have chosen to bomb the front
bottom of a bus, not the rear top; this placement did not made sense.
When Hasib Hussain was named as the bus bomber, witnesses came forward
with descriptions: Hussain was either clean shaven or had stubble; he
had a huge bag or a small bag; he was wearing a dark suit or a flashy
top; he was either fidgeting with his bag or something exploded when he
sat down. It became clear that the most publicized witness, a Richard
Jones, could not have seen Hussain on the bus.
The bus should have had four CCTV cameras operating; police claimed
that they had no footage from any of them, so there was no proof that
Hussain had been on the bus and there was no indication of what had
caused the explosion.
Because the bus explosion came about 50 minutes after the subway
explosions, Hussain became separated from Khan, Tanweer and Lindsay.
According to phone records, Hussain tried repeatedly to call the three
of them around 9 a.m. — after the explosions – without success, with
the phone system shut down. He clearly assumed they were all alive and
wondered what was going on. Hussain’s actions between 9 a.m. and the
No. 30 explosion at 10:47 a.m. should have been picked up by dozens if
not hundreds of CCTV cameras. Although many witnesses claim they saw
Hussain at 9 a.m., the July 7th pictures of Hussain appear to have all
been “photo-shopped”– digitally created or altered. No one knows what
actually happened to Hussain. (Kollerstrom, pp. 57, 64)
Hasib Hussain’s family and friends found the accusation against him
unbelievable; his family insists that he will be shown to be innocent
when further information comes out.
The events of July 21st
On Thursday, July 21st, two weeks after the London bombings, Police
Commissioner Ian Blair met with Prime Minister Tony Blair to discuss an
urgent matter of business. A situation needed to be dealt with. Police
had to be sure that their officers would be fully protected legally from
killing what might be described as “suspected suicide bombers.”
Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) investigators, mandated
by law to investigate police killings — had to be blocked from the scene
of such a killing. The meeting went smoothly.
At around noon that day, four North African immigrants tried to blow
up three London subways and a bus. These bombs were laughable duds;
they made a popping sound like champagne being opened then started
oozing like wet bread dough. They had been made with chapati flour. The
men scattered when they realized that the bombs didn’t work. One
donned a burqa and fled to Birmingham. But on that day, all of the CCTVs
were working and produced 18,000 hours of footage. All of the men were
quickly picked up with the exception of Hussein Osman, who reached
Italy.
Although the official police story was that they had no foreknowledge
about the attempted bombings, The Mirror’s July 22, 2005 edition showed
detailed foreknowledge demonstrated by the British government. Nafeez
Ahmed quotes the article,
“Despite the government’s official insistence that it had
no prior knowledge of the attacks of 21 July 2005, anonymous British
security sources revealed that Scotland Yard had obtained precise
advanced warning of replica bomb attacks on the Tube network that would
almost certainly be executed on Thursday of that week. . . Indeed, only
two hours before the terrorist strikes, Home Secretary Charles Clarke
‘warned senior cabinet colleagues the capital could face another terror
onslaught’ in a confidential briefing. … Most surprisingly, the Home
Secretary had specifically ‘hinted at fears there could be copycat
attacks in the wake of the July 7 atrocities’…. Indeed, police were
racing on the morning of the 21 to locate at least one of the bomber
suspects, several hours before the detonations … .’ At 9:29 a.m. an
armed unit raced to Farrington station as they closed in on the
suspected bomber — but narrowly missed him.’
The incident indicates the extent of the detail apparently available
to the police. How did they know that a suspect would pass through
Farrington? If they had information of such precision, did it extend to
other elements of the plot?’” (Ahmed, pp. 103,104)
The grooming of the would-be “copycat” bombers
Before Hussein Osman was extradited from Italy, he gave interviews
which provided some insights into the operation. He claimed that he,
along with four others were fed for “some weeks”– a steady diet of
graphic films that portrayed mutilated Iraqi victims of American and
British military actions. The men were instructed not to tell anyone
about these mysterious films, which reportedly came from the banned al
Mouhajiroun, a group that many believe was linked to British
intelligence. By July 21, four of the men were prepared to act in
unison to protest the atrocities that the US and UK were committing in
Iraq. Although Osman claimed that he only intended to scare people and
not cause actual damage, at least some of the men did expect to die:
Ramzi Mohammed wrote a suicide note to his girlfriend and the mother of
his children.
A report by Italian judges authorising Osman’s extradition to Britain
confirmed that the devices, ” which were created with flour, hair
lotion, nails, nuts and bolts, and attached to a primitive device with a
battery and unidentified powder which could be used as a detonator when
attached manually to electrical wires – contained no chemical
explosive material.” This description missed a key ingredient: hydrogen
peroxide.
The explosive link between the London bombings and the “copycat”
The most interesting part of this story is the recipe for the dud
bombs: the only time such a recipe had ever been seen before was the
“explosive” found in the Luton car and Leeds’ bathtub. This recipe
turned out to a unique use of hydrogen peroxide that explosives experts
had never seen before. The discovery that the unique explosive connected
to both the July 7th and the July 21st operations was known only to
“government scientists” (Casciani,2007) indicates the role of the
British government in both operations, and contradicts the British
government’s claim that laymen concocted this recipe.
The other significant part of the “copycat bombings” was the police
cover story of Hussein Osman’s gym bag that he left behind. According
to police, they didn’t get to examine Osman’s gym bag until 4 a.m. the
next day, at which time they found a gym membership card belonging to
Osman’s friend Abdi Omar. According to some sources, there was no such
card in his bag. Also, the two men were members of the same gym club and
would not have needed to share cards. In any case, police claimed that
Abdi Omar lived at 21 Scotia Road, and they wanted to stake out his
apartment in order to question him about Hussein Osman.
The July 22 stakeout at 21 Scotia Road “for Abdi Omar”
By 6 a.m. the morning of Friday, July 22, several of Britain’s most
elite intelligence units were operating around 21 Scotia Road. A
surveillance unit had a video feed to the Metropolitan Police’s Gold
Team unit with Designated Service Officer (DSO) Cressida Dick in
charge. While they were supposedly on the lookout for the North African
man, Dick activated the tracking units — one on foot, the other by car —
when a man described as a “Northern European” white male exited the
building around 9:30 am. The targeted man, who would later be
identified as a freelance Brazilian electrician, Jean Charles de
Menezes, strolled to a nearby bus stop and took a bus to a subway
station. The subway station was closed “for security reasons”, so he
called his uncle to tell him he would be delayed, then retraced his
steps to get back on the next bus to reach the next subway. By the time
he reached the Stockwell subway station, it had taken him about half an
hour.
He might have noticed a police car parked in front of the station; a
marksman was awaiting his arrival. Suspecting nothing, he picked up a
free newspaper, showed his identifying “Oyster” subway card at the
ticket office and strolled to the subway platform. The subway car
seemed to be parked there, so he made a quick call on his mobile before
taking his seat in the car and settling in with his newspaper. The
subway driver had arrived at 10 a.m. to find the light red, so he wasn’t
moving. The light remained red until the 10:06 killing.
The killing of Jean Charles de Menezes
There were about 17 other passengers in the subway car. One witness,
Anna Dunwoodie, noticed a jumpy, frightened-looking man sitting near
her. When what looked like a bunch of rowdies approached their car, he
jumped up and pointed de Menezes out to them. Without a word, they
surrounded de Menezes, who looked up at them calmly questioningly. He
was suddenly pinned down and the shots started. The “rowdies” pumped
eleven dumdum bullets into de Menezes, with at least five hitting his
head. According to an eye witness who had to insist that her testimony
be included in the IPCC report, the shots came at about three-second
intervals and lasted for 30 seconds.
The other passengers ran for their lives. One of the police killers
chased the terrified subway driver into the tunnel, where he ran across
live subway wires and the paths of oncoming trains to escape the
“terrorists”.
Pathologist Dr. Kenneth Shorrock was called to look at de Menezes’
body when it was still on the train floor. He claimed that the police
officers at the scene — including the senior investigation officer —
lied to him about the circumstances of de Menezes’ death (Morgan, Davis,
2008) claiming that de Menezes had been running away from them. When
he looked at the contents of Jean Charles’ pockets, only his passport
and loose change remained; police had taken De Menezes’ cell phone.
There was a sign at the scene of the murder which read: ‘Directed by
Detective Superintendent Wolfenden not to allow access to the IPCC,
authority of commissioner and prime minister.” (Percival, 11/2008).
Chief Inspector Stephen Costello claimed that the Prime Minister was
consulted over a decision to bar to IPCC from entering Stockwell subway
station after the shooting and issued a directive. In fact, the police
not only banned the IPCC from the site of the execution, but they also
refused to turn over their internal documents, as required by law.
(Mitchell, 2007)
The police killers, meanwhile, headed for a lawyer’s office to come
up with a story that would protect them all. They had been assured
before the operation that whatever happened they would be protected
legally. Their story — repeated subsequently under oath by all of them —
was that they had called out that they were “police” to de Menezes but
that he then reacted in a threatening way which led them to make the
decision to kill him. That they had been fitted out with the banned dum
dum bullets, used for lethal encounters, was overlooked.
Abdi Omar, the supposed target of the stakeout at 21 Scotia Road, had
been out of the UK on business for the past week. A swat team knew
where his wife and children were, however, and paid them a visit later
that day, putting the mother-in-law in hospital with a heart attack.
Omar returned some days later and asked police if they wanted to speak
with him; they didn’t.
Police realized at some point that they had a problem: Abdi Omar had
only been wanted for questioning and had not been a suicide bombing
suspect. For their legal protection — their “get out of jail free card”
– they had to have been chasing Hussein Osman, who had made it to
Italy. Luckily, their last names both started with “O”. There was
disappointingly little notice taken when police changed the name of
their supposed target from “Omar ” to “Osman”.
The evening of the killing, a retired Scotland Yard officer on BBC
News challenged the government’s claim that the killing had been done by
a Scotland Yard officer and there would be no investigation.
Impossible, he said; if the killing had been done by a Yard officer,
there would automatically be an investigation. Evidence began to
indicate that at least two elite British intelligence units had been
involved in the murder, the Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR) which
specializes in surveillance and “false flag operations” and the
newly-formed police marksmen’s unit, C019 (or referred to as S019),
trained by the elite SAS. The weapons pictured on the agents as well as
the manner of the killing pointed to British special forces carrying out
the de Menezes’ execution. (Norton-Taylor, 8/2005)
When people heard about the public police killing of a suspected
terrorist, they assumed that the victim had to be black and Muslim. A
self-proclaimed eyewitness quickly came forward to say that the targeted
man was wearing a “puffy jacket with wires hanging out” and had been
chased by police into the Stockwell Subway station, a chase that sounded
no more than a few minutes. Police claimed that the CCTV cameras were
not operating. Unfortunately for them, this time they were.
There was shock as the news dribbled out that the victim had been a
young white man who had been followed by elite units for half an hour,
allegedly mistaking him for a North African. Police tried to smear him:
he was an illegal; he looked suspicious. One after another, they turned
out to be lies. A whistleblower released a photo of the dead De
Menezes; he had been wearing a light denim jacket — not any “puffy
jacket” with wires. She was quickly fired and harassed. The CCTVs
showed him strolling leisurely into the subway; it had been the police
leaping over barriers, not de Menezes. The police version was that an
interminable number of miscommunications had occurred leading to the
deadly mistake. If one believed that the Gold Team had been as
incompetent as they claimed, the person in charge would have faced a
career disaster. Instead, Cressida Dick was promoted to Deputy
Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police; her associate was
also rewarded with a promotion. No one was to be held accountable in any
way for Jean Charles’ murder.
Slowly, over a period of years, the police lies were exposed despite
their refusal to give their information to the IPCC. The truth came out
as easily as the pulling of police teeth, painfully with small parts of
the story being extracted with the various official inquiries. The most
dramatic would be the 2008 inquest into Jean
Charles de Menezes’ death,
the first time witnesses would be heard.
Meanwhile, what had happened to the bodies of the accused?
By August, people started to ask questions about what had happened to
the bodies of the accused. None of the families had been allowed to
identify them; they had not even been given the bodies for burial.
Khan’s family, suspicious, asked for an independent autopsy to be
performed; it was not done. On August 24th, when the corpses would have
been over six weeks old, The Guardian reported that the Metropolitan
police claimed that they were holding the bodies of the accused to
reassemble their body parts to analyse their positions on the bombs’
detonations. It would not be until the 2010 Hallett inquest that the
shocking details would come out.
Of the accused, only Tanweer and Hussain had family burials. In both cases, the burials were accompanied by security personnel.
- Ÿ At the end of October 2005, Tanweer’s body was taken to Pakistan
for interment in a family grave; security personnel accompanied the body
to Pakistan and guarded the site for days after the interment. The
family never saw the remains.
- Ÿ Six police oversaw the funeral of Hasib Hussain, “ensuring the service remained private.”
The Khan Tape (Sept. 1, 2005)
British newspapers had been slowly coming out with stories that
questioned whether the accused men thought they were going to die. All
of the men had round-trip tickets and they had paid for their cars to be
parked for the day. There were no suicide notes and their families all
expected them home. And then there was the question of motive: there
was none. The men were known to be secular and even apolitical. Khan and
Tanweer were both known to be particularly patriotic; all were
peace-loving.
Khan’s wife Hasina Patel said she had never heard “Sid” criticize the
actions of the British government or its role in world events. In
excerpts from an interview with Sky news, Patel said “… I kept thinking
that something was wrong, I don’t know, that maybe it was a set up, … I
didn’t even have any inkling towards his views even going in that
direction … I could never have imagined in my wildest dreams, never.”
(Sky, 2007)
On September 1st a short video surfaced showing Khan dressed up in
red Palestinian-like scarf used as a head bandana. A crude, hand-woven
rug was in the background and he was stabbing the air with a pen,
complaining about British crimes towards Muslims. There was no mention
of any action that would be taken. The tape, which included an edited-in
clip of Al Qaeda’s al Zwahiri, was not shown in its entirety.
It was obvious that at least in some sections, Khan’s words did not
match his lip movements. His friends noticed that judging by Khan’s
appearance, the tape had to have been made in 2004, the year Khan and
Tanweer were taped by police. They also claimed that the tape didn’t
sound like Khan and was a fraud.
The government responses
The government claimed that the four accused had worked alone, with
Khan as the “ringleader”, and that the tape showed that Khan’s motive
was to martyr himself for Islam. They also claimed that a tape of
Tanweer existed. Their claims that the accused worked alone begged the
question of who released the tape of Khan, how they knew of Tanweer’s
tape and who controlled it.
The following May, two government reports confirmed their official
version of the July 7th bombings and recommend a higher security budget.
The Tanweer tape (July 6, 2006)
On July 5, 2006, a U.S. broadcaster with a reputation for security
links claimed that a tape of Shezad Tanweer was expected to be shown the
next day on Al Jazeera.
On July 6, 2006, the eve of the anniversary of the London bombings,
al Jazeera showed part of a video of Tanweer. The shots, also taken in
2004, are strikingly similar to the one released the previous year of
“Sid” Khan; Tanweer is wearing the identical Palestinian-like red scarf
around his head, with the identical background rug and making the same
strange stabbing movements with a pen. The video includes edited-in
clips of the al Qaeda leader al Zwahiri as well as a self-proclaimed
American member of al Qaeda, Adam Gadahn. (While Gadahn is also known to
the FBI as “Abu Suhayb Al-Amriki, Abu Suhayb, Yihya Majadin Adams and
Yayah”, he was born Adam Pearlman.) There were also silly shots meant to
appear ominous such as a disembodied hand on maps, etc. Again, words
do not match the lip movements. Shezad Tanweer’s family has not
publicly commented on it.
Both the Khan and Tanweer tapes were released at politically
opportune times for the British government. So while the tapes
supposedly show Khan and Tanweer’s support for Al Qaeda, and perhaps
Palestinians, the tapes’ origins and releases both implicate British
security services.
The 2008 De Menezes’ inquest
The De Menezes’ family had kept up their pressure on the government
for an inquest into their son’s murder; finally, in September, 2008, the
inquest opened. The purpose of this inquest, presided over by Coroner
Sir Michael Wright, was to allow jurors to decide whether or not the
police had killed Jean Charles de Menezes lawfully. Previous inquests
had established that no one, including DSO Cressida Dick, would be held
personally responsible for Jean Charles’ death.
Sir Ian Blair, who had been hanging onto his job as Police
Commissioner, toughing out troubling challenges to his integrity on this
issue, finally quit at the start of that inquiry. He must have figured
that the jig would be up when certain information came out — information
that included his meeting with Tony Blair to give police legal
protection for a killing, police perjury, police manipulation of events
around the death and tampering with police records. It would be the
first time that eye witnesses to this event were allowed to testify.
Over fifty agents were given identity protection for testifying and the
identity-protected killers were not allowed to be either seen or
photographed at the site.
Despite the profoundly shocking information that came out at this
inquest, Sir Michael Wright did his best to ensure jurors gave the
police a favorable ruling. His actions included:
Ÿ
informing jurors that they would only be allowed to return a
verdict either of lawful killing or an “open” verdict: they were not
permitted to rule against the police;
Ÿ
warning jurors that they were not to attach criminal or civil fault to responsible individuals such as DSO Cressida Dick;
Ÿ
giving the jury secret advice and suggesting that police perjury might have been committed for selfless motives.
The De Menezes’ inquest results
The jury returned an “open” verdict, much to the relief of the
police. Given the evidence, they had been prepared for an “unlawful”
verdict, despite the Coroner’s charge to the jury. Despite the agents’
perjury and admitted destruction of evidence, they will not face
charges.
The De Menezes’ family finally gave up their fight for justice on
November 23, 2009 with a settlement with the Metropolitan police for one
hundred thousand pounds plus legal expenses.
The Jean Charles de Menezes inquiry exposed the government betrayal
of the public through manipulation of the police, of the justice system
and the media:
The media obediently played along as the facts came out. While they
did report the stories that showed that de Menezes had been the real
target, that police perjured themselves, and that Tony Blair had
apparently played a role, each article ended with the mantra that De
Menezes’ killing had merely been the result of unfortunate mistakes.
The story that the most elite security teams in Britain claimed that
they thought a “North European” white male was a North African after a
half hour surveillance was not challenged.
The papers never asked why Jean Charles had been targeted. Could a
recent job have related to the July 7th “power surges”? No one knew
where he had been working. The Guardian approached that subject
obliquely in December, 2008, noting that de Menezes’ friends were
“terrified”; they understood that the public killing of their friend was
a warning not to talk.
The 2010 Hallett Inquest into the security services
In May 2010, Lady Justice Hallett called for an inquest into the
activities of the British security services the year prior to the July
7th bombings. The inquest, which the security services warned would
“encourage terrorists,” was held in the fall of 2010; the hearings were
public but there was no jury. The families of 52 of the victims were
allowed to take part; the families of the accused were barred from
participating, and so unable to challenge any witnesses. Lady Hallett
said she might consider a future inquest to include them. Lady Justice
Hallett and QC Hugo Keith controlled the proceedings.
The inquest was expected to answer questions on the timing, the
location and the makeup of the bombs; instead, it raised even more
questions:
Ÿ
Since the discovery of the “homemade explosive”, the government
had claimed that the London bombs had been homemade; in fact, the traces
of TATP that should have been found if they had been homemade were not
identified at the blast sites;
Ÿ
While the government produced some new CCTV evidence,
investigators noticed suspicious cuts at key parts of much of it,
especially when the accused were meeting other people;
Ÿ
The scope of the missing CCTV evidence was staggering, with none
of dozens (if not hundreds!) of CCTV cameras allegedly functioning at
any of the affected subway stations until after the bombings were over;
Ÿ
The government’s destruction of evidence and lack of documentation
made it impossible to resolve discrepancies between the government’s
claims of damage and witnesses’ accounts.
Ÿ
The absence of autopsies and documentation of injury made it
difficult to confirm eyewitness accounts that the train explosions
originated under the floors.
Ÿ
One investigator noticed that the Metropolitan Police diagrams
reconstructing the subway explosions did not match the official Home
Office description of those killed and injured. Taking the Liverpool/
Aldgate explosion as an example, he noted that the Met diagram only
showed a total of 43 people in the carriage while the Home Office
narrative claimed that “the blast killed 8 people, including Tanweer,
with 171 injured.” According to the police diagram, the two standing on
either side of Tanweer survived, one with only minor injuries. The
investigator noted that if the blast killed 8 of the 43, that left only
35 potentially- injured in that carriage. The implication is that the
other 136 injured at that site must have been occupants of another three
cars in that train with a similar occupancy. “ (Investigating the
terror, 2012)
Ÿ
Evidence pointed to more than three damaged subway cars; Did the
government reduce the number of events to correspond to the number of
Muslims that volunteered for this event?
While this inquest did produce stunning information about the death
counts and the state of the corpses of some accused, it specifically
excluded how police came to identify the accused.
On Hasib Hussain and the No. 30 bus
Ÿ
The inquest was shown photos which were claimed to be of Hussain’s
body separated from other bodies and under a blue blanket. No one knew
who had identified him, who placed him there, or who put the special
blanket on him. Or if his body was, in fact, under it.
Ÿ Lisa French, a witness seated no further than five seats in front
of the explosion, testified that when she was getting off the bus,
police discouraged her from helping a “pile” of people, indicating that
they were already dead. (Addley, 2011) Could these have been the extra
bodies?
Ÿ At the 2010 inquest, it was discovered that another Asian youth
had been sitting at the back of the top deck at the time of the
explosion.
On Khan and Tanweer
Witnesses testified that the initial death counts at the Edgware and
Aldgate sites included only commuters, not the bodies of “suicide
bombers”. Police added one to each of these tallies later that day so
that the accused would be included in the count. A day or two after the
bombings, body parts of the accused would be located at the private,
off-limit subway sites.
Ÿ
“Sid” Khan’s remains at Edgware:
Ÿ
A large part of Khan’s corpse –without hands, head, or even teeth–
was found on 6 am July 8th; police turned over the remains at an
unspecified date, identifying it when presented to the Home Office
Forensic Science Service as belonging to Mohammed Sidique Khan, with a
request to confirm the identification through DNA links his parents.
(Police apparently were not aware that Khan’s father had married a woman
with the same name as Khan’s biological mother.) The identification
was not done using DNA known to be Khan’s. (J7 blogspot: Khan)
Ÿ
The Edgware death count confirms what had been published. Police
had identified Khan as a “suicide bomber” on Tuesday, July 12 even
though police then acknowledged that Khan’s body was missing from the
Edgware site. (BBC, 7,2005)
Ÿ
Khan’s intact ID papers were apparently planted at Edgware, Aldgate and on the bus.
Shazad Tanweer’s remains at Aldgate:
Ÿ
On Saturday, July 9th, only a 1.8 Kg spinal fragment allegedly
belonging to Tanweer was found on the train; the DNA lab work, dated
July 13 to 28th, included no indication of how police had already
identified the remains as belonging to Tanweer; (J7 blogspot: Tanweer)
Ÿ
Note that Tanweer’s identification cards – found at both Aldgate
and the No. 30 bus — survived the virtually total disintegration of his
body.
The damage to Khan’s and Tanweer’s bodies was not consistent with the
state of the other corpses. Despite the fact that others – the dead as
well as survivors — had been close to the sources of the explosions,
the bodies of all other victims had remained basically intact and easily
identifiable. It was ironic that the police had initially implied that
the bodies of Khan and Tanweer were easy to identify and did not
require the assistance of DNA analysis. Could the state of their
corpses be explained as efforts to hide bullet wounds the men might have
sustained at Canary Wharf?
On Germaine/”Jamal” Lindsay
Interestingly, there was reportedly no “life extinct” count at
Piccadilly taken on July 7th as there had been at the other sites; there
had to have been a count of the dead at some point, why did it not made
it to this inquest?
According to the original police story, the identification of Lindsay
required DNA analysis. Although his wife understood that this analysis
had confirmed Lindsay’s participation in the events of July 7th, a BBC
article on July 14th, 2005, “Fourth bomber’s name disclosed” implied
that police might not have had the DNA results that Samantha Lewthwaite
thought they did.
The absence of similar DNA information that was provided for Khan and
Tanweer appears to be significant, particularly because police admitted
that they did not possess Lindsay’s body on July 12th (Bennetto,
Herbert, 2005); and that police believed that Lindsay survived July 7th
(Jones, 2005) and (Bucks Herald, 2005). Were police marksmen at Canary
Wharf looking only for Pakistanis?
The Hallett verdict and outcomes
In May 2011 the Hallett Inquest determined that 52 of the 56 London
deaths had been “unlawful”, the fault only of the “bombers” rather than
of the hours-long medical response time or a lack of diligence of the
security services. Hallett refused to hold any investigation for the
families of the accused.
The Hallett Inquiry ultimately demonstrated pervasive government
manipulation and/or mistreatment of the evidence. On August 2, 2011 a
legal challenge by victims’ families to force the British government to
hold a public inquiry into the July 7 attacks was abandoned
“acknowledging that the proceedings would likely be unsuccessful.”
In 2012-2013, Jamal Lindsay’s wife Samantha Lewthwaite, now remarried
and the mother of three (the father of her third child, born in 2009,
was not identified), is described in the media as a major terrorist
living in East Africa and is reportedly hunted – to be killed on sight —
by dozens of MI5 and MI6, the CIA, police from Kenya and detectives
from South Africa! This hunt appears to relate to the 7/7 bombings:
police claim they found “key chemicals” [sic] related to the London
bombings such as “acetone and hydrogen peroxide” at a raid on her home.
Does she possess information that makes such a hunt worth the cost?
The evidence of responsibility points to the British government
There was a history of government-run terror exercises in London,
including ones that closely mirrored the London bombings’ scenario;
Ÿ
There was extensive evidence of police foreknowledge, including
Scotland Yard’s warning to the Israeli embassy before the blasts; the
police allowed the London bombings to happen;
It was only “government scientists” that knew the recipe of the
“unique” hydrogen-peroxide based “explosives” that were in the Luton
car, the Leeds bathtub and the “copycat” “bombs;”
Ÿ
The government removed, destroyed and neglected to keep important
evidence; evidence shown to the public has been shown to be falsified or
tampered with;
Ÿ
The government has refused to hold any independent, public investigation into the bombings;
Ÿ
The government labelling of the London bombings as “suicide
bombings” (and the accused, “homegrown suicide bombers”) with no
evidence that there had been suicide bombs demonstrated the agenda that
allowed Tony Blair to then follow through with his “anti-terror”
legislation:
As a result of the July 7th London bombings, the British government
eliminated traditional civil liberties and expanded its security
services.
In 2007, the July 7th Truth Campaign described the post-7/7 state of
British freedoms in “Capitalising on Terror”: In less than two years
the UK has descended into a police state. Taking photographs of
landmarks is now classified as ‘terrorist reconnaisance’, being caught
in possession of a map has been prosecuted as ‘having information likely
to be useful to a terrorist’. Protesting outside the people’s
Parliament is now a crime unless the state has first granted permission
and you can be arrested for wearing a t-shirt a policeman doesn’t like.
Your DNA and fingerprints will be taken and stored indefinitely.
Everyone from young children to old age pensioners are actively being
targeted under anti-terrorist legislation and this legislation is being
used to suppress dissent and opposition to the government, its policies
and the way it enforces them. Blair has talked of implementing private
police forces and police powers have been given to thousands of
non-police entities including amongst others traffic wardens, landlords
and council officials. …
Recently the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, suggested that
modern day Britain is comparable to Idi Amin’s regime in Uganda. Around
the same time the leader of Birmingham Central Mosque, Dr Mohammed
Naseem, compared life for Muslims in the UK to that of the life of Jews
in Nazi Germany. In among the furore that ensued among the liberal
intelligentsia, the leader of the Conservative Party, David Cameron,
gently reminded everyone that the laws don’t just apply to Muslims, or
terrorists, the laws apply to everyone. If you are reading this in
Britain, that means you. (J7,2007)
Notes:
Ahmed, Nafeez Mosaddeq. 2006. The London Bombings, London: Duckworth p103/104/274
BBC, 7/2005. Police release bus bomber images. 14 July, 2005. BBC News. retrieved July 6, 2008 at:
Antagonist.
2005. London 7/7: Number 30 Bus Explosion – Photos & Questions. 1
September 2005. Anything that defies my sense of reason. , retrieved
July 5, 2008 at:
Bucks
Herald, The. 2005. Aylesbury was ’30 minutes from evacuation’. Tuesday,
25 October. The Bucks Herald. Retrieved July 28, 2011 at:
Casbolt, J.
A Message of Love to my Asian Brothers and Sisters: The true inside
facts about the 7/7 London bombings, February 18, 2007. Jamescasbolt.
retrieved June 26, 2008 at: Http://www.jamescasbolt.com/bombings.htm
Chossudovsky,
Michel. 8/8 2005. 7/7 Mock Terror Drill: What Relationship to the Real
Time Terror Attacks? 8 Aug. Centre for Research on Globalisation.
Retrieved June 26, 2008 at:
J7 blogspot
Khan. The identification of Mohammed Sidique Khan.:J7: The July 7th
Truth Campaign. Tuesday, November 30, 2010. retrieved on July 4, 2013
at:
Kollerstrom, Nick. 2012. Terror on the Tube. Palm Desert, California. Progressive.
Karin Brothers is a freelance writer who was in England throughout the events related to the London bombings.
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