Saudis alerted UK about attack

2005-08-07 07:39

London - Saudi officials alerted Britain several weeks before the deadly July 7 bombings in London that a terror attack was being planned, two Sunday newspapers reported.

The Observer quoted a security official in the Saudi capital Riyadh as saying that information was passed to MI5 and MI6, Britain's domestic and foreign intelligence agencies respectively.

The Sunday Telegraph quoted the Saudi ambassador to Britain, Prince Turki al-Faisal, as saying that details of a possible conspiracy to attack London - apparently extracted from terrorism suspects in Saudi Arabia - had been given to British intelligence.

"There were reports passed on to your authorities several months ago (in April-May) in general terms of a heightened expectancy of attacks on London," said the ambassador, a former chief of Saudi intelligence.

Security sources played down the reports. The Observer quoted one source as "categorically" denying that any specific information had been received that could have averted the July 7 attacks.

The source said they "did not recognise" the details of the Saudi claims, which came to light one month to the day after the attacks.

There was no immediate comment from the Foreign Office or the Home Office, but Prime Minister Tony Blair has previously rejected suggestions of an intelligence failure.

Saudi security sources were reported on Sunday to be investigating whether two al-Qaeda operatives were in phone contact with a British ringleader of the plotters of the July 7 bombings.

Money transfers were thought to have been made from Saudi Arabia to Britain in the first six months of the year through businesses in the two countries, it was reported.

The Observer and the Sunday Telegraph said the investigations revolve around two Moroccans, identified as Kareem al-Majati and Younes al-Hayari, both alleged to have been senior figures in Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.

The two were killed in separate shoot-outs in Saudi Arabia in the weeks before July 7.

The Observer quoted a Saudi official as saying: "It was clear to us that there was a terror group planning an attack in the United Kingdom. We passed on all this information to both MI5 and MI6."

The official was quoted as saying that investigations were underway into whether calls made by the two Moroccans to Britain were directly to the London bombers.

"It is our conclusion that either these were linked or that a completely different terror network is still at large in Britain," he added.

Prince Turki was quoted in The Observer as saying in a statement: "There was certainly close liaison between the Saudi Arabian intelligence authorities and the British intelligence authorities some time ago, when information was passed to Britain about a heightened terrorist threat to London."

To the Sunday Telegraph, he said: "In the course of an exchange of information between the kingdom and the UK, there were reports passed on to your authorities several months ago (in April-May) in general terms of a heightened expectancy of attacks on London."

"This information came in the form of statements made under interrogation from terrorists who had been arrested in the kingdom and other places," he said, without indicating where the "other places" were.

- AFP