LONDON, 2 May 2007 — MPs are set to reinvestigate the way MI5 handled intelligence about the 7/7 London suicide bombers after it emerged two of them had been dropped from its investigation because they were not deemed a priority. The suspected ringleader of the July 7 bombers Mohammed Sidique Khan and his accomplice Shehzad Tanweer were part of the group that set off a series of bombs on the London transport network in 2005, killing 52 people.
It emerged Monday that during an investigation into a group of men plotting fertilizer bomb attacks, security services had been aware of links between the two groups. Khan and Tanweer had not been considered a priority by the security forces because they had not been monitored talking about carrying out attacks in Britain.
Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee issued a report last year into the 7/7 operation, in which it concluded the security services were justified in not regarding the pair as priorities.
But it will now re-examine its report following a request by Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Home Secretary John Reid on Monday refused requests from families of the victims and from opposition parties for a full independent inquiry, saying it was not the “correct response.”
The calls came after five men were sentenced to life at the Old Bailey for plotting to carry out Al-Qaeda-inspired bomb attacks across Britain at targets ranging from nightclubs to trains and a shopping center.
Khan and Tanweer met the fertilizer plotters up to five times at one of the conspirator’s home in Crawley during early 2004. However, MI5 said on its website that the pair “appeared as petty fraudsters in loose contact with members of the plot.”
“There was no indication that they were involved in planning any kind of terrorist attack in the UK,” MI5 said.
But it did admit that a telephone conversation involving an individual identified after July 7 as Khan was recorded as possibly talking about going to fight with militia groups in Pakistani border areas.
MI5 is facing questions over what it told MPs about the suicide bombers.
The security service had briefed journalists that the July 7 bombers were “clean skins” — men with no previous record of terrorist associations. “A year ago, we were told that the bombers were clean skins, coming out of the blue,” said Rachel North, who survived one of the three bombs that exploded on a London Underground train. “It is quite apparent now that they were not. It is a matter of necessity that we have a proper interrogatory inquiry into what happened.”
There is also confusion as to whether West Yorkshire Police special branch was told about the MI5 surveillance operation.
Blair, in rejecting an independent inquiry, said there are “literally scores of these conspiracies” involving all sorts of people on the fringes. “They (the police and security forces) cannot, with all the resources in the world, they cannot chase every single one down,” he told GMTV.
