London bombers 'not a threat'

2005-12-17 10:40

London - Two of the four presumed suicide bombers who killed 52 commuters in the July 7 London attacks were scrutinised by British intelligence last year but were not considered a threat, a newspaper reported on Saturday.

Shahzad Tanweer, 22, assumed to have detonated a rucksack bomb on a subway train, is believed to have been indirectly linked to an alleged plot to build a bomb in 2004, the Independent said, without identifying sources.

Tanweer is thought to have been the subject of a routine assessment by MI5, Britain's domestic intelligence agency, the paper said.

No further action was taken after it was decided that he was on the periphery of any plotting and that there were far more significant suspects to investigate, it added.

The paper noted that previous reports had also named the suspected mastermind of the attacks, Mohammad Sidique Khan, 30, as being known to security services.

The newspaper said the decision by MI5 to disregard two of the men who would later become bombers was based on the assessment that they were not on the intelligence "radar" and only had an indirect link - via an associate of the gang under investigation - to the main targets.

Tanweer and Khan, along with Jermaine Lindsay and Hasib Hussain, all Muslim British nationals, were named by police as being behind near-simultaneous suicide attacks on three subway trains and a bus in London on July 7.

In the immediate aftermath of bombings it was thought that the four men were so-called "clean skins", with no previously known links to terrorism.

Tanweer and Khan spent three months in Pakistan before returning to Britain in February this year. It is thought they could have been given terrorist training in religious schools in Pakistan, the newspaper said.

The disclosure that a second of the four bombers had come to the attention of MI5 is likely to increase pressure for a public inquiry into the London attacks and any failures in intelligence, the newspaper added.

The Independent said it learned that there were so many new terrorist suspects coming to the attention of the security agencies and anti-terrorist police that there are not enough officers to investigate them all.

- AFP