Just seven days before the second anniversary of the London terror bombings and in just the second day of the new government of Gordon Brown, bombers have once again tried to strike at London. However the two car bombs, parked Friday night in the British capital’s busy nighttime West End, both failed to explode. However had they done so, said senior Scotland Yard officers, the results would have been devastating. As with all other terror attacks, successful or botched, the hours immediately following the events were clouded with speculation, which included the unsubstantiated claim, now thought unlikely, that both explosive devices were similar to the roadside bombs thought to be of Iranian origin, deployed in the last two years against coalition forces in Iraq and now more recently in Afghanistan.
The British police as usual are giving little away about their investigation, except that it is huge. Security sources have maintained that the discovery of these two deadly car bombs was not an “intelligence lead”; it was an alert ambulance man who spotted smoke coming from one of the vehicles and a car impound attendant who noticed something similar on a car that had been towed away for being illegally parked. Therefore for all the considerable intelligence effort that the British have mounted against Al-Qaeda suspects — to the discomfort of the country’s Muslim minority — there were no clues that another attack was about to be mounted. It seems clear that London was extremely fortunate that both of these car bombs failed to explode, because the bombers bungled, or because citizens were duly diligent, and/or because courageous bomb disposal experts disarmed them in time. The failure of this attack has resonances with the failed suicide bomb attack two weeks after devastation of the July 7, 2006 bombs. In fact the jury is currently considering its verdict at the end of a lengthy trial of the six young British Muslims who are accused of trying replicate the earlier butchery. This may account for the studious silence from police and media about any possible link between this latest attack and the trial, which could prejudice the jury.
Though the authorities were caught by surprise, they have a great deal of undamaged evidence to examine forensically in the current weeks. In addition Britain now has the highest density of security cameras anywhere in the world. It is very likely that the two Mercedes carrying the bombs can be traced along their route to Central London. The assumption will be that the terrorists will once again be radicalized young British Muslims (direct beneficiaries of a liberal Western society that they have come to crudely and self-righteously oppose) directed by shadowy Al-Qaeda figures who may not even be in the UK. Britain’s Muslim community undoubtedly shares the general revulsion at this latest crime and will be willing to do all it can to help discover the wicked perpetrators. It must be hoped that the British police have learned from their past failures to deal sensitively with British Muslims during their inquiries and will proceed in this latest investigation with wisdom and care. Authorities should recognize that even though these terrorists call themselves Muslims, Muslims are not terrorists.
