Attack planners 'still at large'

2005-09-03 09:43

London - In the two months since London was wracked by a series of bombings that killed 52 people, investigators have moved swiftly to identify and arrest those who carried out the attacks, but uncovering the networks that may have supported them has proven harder.

Officially, Scotland Yard will not comment on the investigations, saying only that detectives are exploring all possibilities.

But privately, investigators have told analysts that the search for culprits linked to the July 7 bombings of three subways and a bus is moving slowly because of its international scope and the fact that all four bombers died in the attacks.

"In both cases, those who planned, organised and recruited for the attacks are still at large," said Charles Shoebridge, a security consultant and former counterterrorism officer with Scotland Yard.

No one has been charged in the July 7 attacks and investigators have been reluctant to link them directly to al-Qaeda. Yet the possibility of an al-Qaeda connection was strengthened on Thursday when al-Jazeera television aired a tape purporting to be the last testament of Mohammed Sidique Khan, the reputed ringleader of the bombings. The footage also contained a message from al-Qaeda No 2 Ayman al-Zawahri, although the two did not appear together.

In a thick Yorkshire accent, Khan said he was inspired by bin Laden, al-Zawahri and the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi. He said the bombings were a message to Britain that violence against Muslims worldwide must cease.

At least two other groups had claimed responsibility for the attacks, but both had made dubious claims in the past.

The four attackers - three Pakistani Britons and a Jamaican-born Briton - killed 52 people and themselves and wounded hundreds in the first known suicide bombing in Western Europe.

Two weeks later, a similar effort failed when explosives carried by another group of attackers didn't go off. No one was killed or hurt. The alleged attackers, now in custody, were mainly Muslim immigrants from east Africa.

David Winnick, a British lawmaker from Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour Party, said the recording was the clearest sign yet that Khan and his accomplices - Shahzad Tanweer, Hasib Mir Hussain and Lindsey Germaine - had help in organising the bombings.

"It would be somewhat difficult to believe that the people involved ... organised it without the support of international terrorist connections," said Winnick, who is on the House of Commons home affairs select committee.

But if such co-conspirators exist, authorities have yet to find them.

Investigators have had more success in tracking down those involved in the failed July 21 attacks - four men were charged with planning the attacks or three were charged with aiding them evade arrest. Another suspect was arrested in Italy and faces extradition to Britain.

- AP