From the 7/7 Blogosphere

[Steven Gaal]

J7: 7/7 Inquests Blog

7/7 Inquest: Examining and documenting the proceedings of the Coroner's Inquest into the London Bombings of 7 July 2005, including analysis of the hearing transcripts and the evidence presented.

Sunday, February 27, 2011MI5 taking the PISCES - Part 1

Week 18 of the 7/7 Inquest proceedings from 21st to 24th February was scheduled to hear evidence regarding Preventability issues. The corporate witness for MI5 - Witness G was allocated two days, ACC Parkinson for West Yorkshire Police a day, and the final day was to hear evidence from ex-Metropolitan Police DAC Peter Clarke as well as DS Prunty of SO13. The lead counsel on Preventability issues was Patrick O'Connor assisted by Caoilfhionn Gallagher, both representing the bereaved families.

Witness G was instead on the stand for over 3½ days yet, on critical matters, Witness G claimed to know nothing. For those watching in the press and public annexe, also set-up by De Boers, Witness G's testimony was listened to while staring at a blank screen where the witness being questioned would usually appear. Often nothing was heard in response to questioning as Witness G simply nodded his responses. Noteworthy is that the deferential Hugo Keith QC failed to pull Witness G up on his repeated nodded responses, in the same way he would usually admonish a witness by making the point that the stenographers cannot hear a nod. Also interesting was the apparent appointment of new stenographers -- the live transcriptions come into their own when the microphones aren't working, something which generally occurs when counsel other than Keith interject or begin their questioning -- to replace the usual team owing to the high-security required by MI5 to put Witness G on the stand. This meant we were treated to 'petty criminal' appearing on the screen that carries the live transcriptions as 'pet tea criminal'. There were also long delays before each day's transcripts and adduced evidence appeared on the Inquests public website. In fact, a number of pieces of adduced evidence have yet to appear on the Inquests web site owing to "issues with the publication of these documents" that are being worked through with the American authorities. Unsurprisingly, these document relate specifically to the fantastical case of the FBI's star Supergrass/Informant, Mohammed Junaid Babar.

So how and why did Witness G's appearance get dragged out for 3½ days? Simply because, after being denied permission to make public Witness G's written statements, Mr Eadie, QC for the Home Secretary and the Security Service, decided to force the issue by insisting that G's three written statements be adduced into evidence and published on the Inquests website. Highly irregular behaviour, as pointed out by both Hugo Keith and Justice Hallett, given that G's evidence should be his oral testimony, not prior written statements. Only those pages actually referred to and shown during his oral testimony would go into the evidence published by the Inquests, and it was argued by counsel that this was sufficient as the Inquests had done justice to the written statements in examining each area. Eadie was insistent and informed the Inquest and the many bereaved families present that he would then take Witness G through each page and in that way get the full written statement adduced. Wednesday was expended through little more than G's simple repeated responses of "Yes", "No", "Don't know" and "I agree" to Eadie. The day that should have been available to Patrick O'Connor QC, the advocate to the bereaved, to examine the evidence of West Yorkshire Police was robbed from them in a most cynical way. So too was most of Thursday. The three remaining witnesses were left with a little over three hours in which to give evidence and answer questions. Malfeasant filibustering on behalf of the State indeed.

Evidence

Were these 3½ days useful in terms of evidence? The press picked up on the fact that severely cropped photos of Shehzad Tanweer and Mohammed Sidique Khan were sent to the FBI to be shown to Supergrass/FBI informer Mohammed Junaid Babar in order to identify the members of the 'Crevice Plot'. Khan's photo was so badly cropped that it wasn't even shown to Babar. The ludicrous explanation from G was that the original photo would have shown the covert nature of the photograph and could reveal where it had been taken. Even the deferential Hugo Keith could not allow this explanation to go by unchallenged and asked if it was thought that Babar would be capable of recognising Toddington Service Station. Keith also ventured that one of his progeny could do a better job. Whether the FBI might not have had access to colour imaging systems in 2004 raised another note of disbelief from Keith: "America is not the other side of the moon. The systems must have been in place to allow a colour photograph to be transmitted to America".

By the end of the first day of Witness G's testimony J7 were compelled to write to the Coroner. We sent the following:

On 21 February pm, Witness G gave the following testimony in relation to a subscriber check on a phone number registered to MSK at 49a Bude Road:

Q. Could we have Security Service document SYS11076 [sYS11076-1], please? You have in the last day or two, G, provided some further details in relation to this call?

A. (Witness nods).

Q. The Security Service gave evidence, did it not, to the Intelligence and Security Committee that the calls were in July and August in their entirety, but, in fact, that was erroneous?

A. No. The calls were in July and August as reported in the ISC report. Our error at that point was saying we had done the subscriber check in July and August rather than March.

Q. I understand. So there were calls -- I think the ISC report showed or stated that there were calls in on 19th July, I think 15th August and -- sorry -- two dates in July and a date, 17th August, but it has subsequently transpired, has it not, that there were more calls on 19th July than the ISC understood?

A. Correct.

Q. The call on 17th August was not 17th August, but 15th August?

A. Correct.

Q. So there were some small errors in relation to the dates given to the Intelligence and Security Committee?

A. (Witness nods).

Q. The essence of the calls was this, was it not: that one of the early significant individuals in the Operation Crevice, the operation from 2003 and through 2004, was in touch with a man called Sidique Khan, who gave that address, but that was all it was understood to be?

A. It is not actually right to say he gave that address. That was the subscriber address for the telephone.

Q. If a check had been done, if a check had been done, and I am not suggesting that that single call necessitated a check, it would have shown that there was a person in touch with Mohammed Qayum Khan called Sidique Khan of 49A Bude Road?

A. That was a subscriber to the phone, yes.

Q. Operation Crevice, which included this man Mohammed Qayum Khan, gave rise to thousands upon thousands of what you have described earlier as call events, data events?

A. (Witness nods).

What explanation is there for a subscriber check on 11/03/2003 - 6 months before the phone call from 'Q' to a phone registered to MSK at 49a Bude Road in July 2003? 11/03/2003 would appear to be prior to the date of 'late March 2003' given for the start of Operation Crevice in the ISC II report.

Enlarge

J7's question was put to Witness G the following day and his response elicited another missive from J7 to the Inquests:

J7 appreciate that the Inquest team examined our query in relation to the subscriber check on the MSK phone 49a Bude Road carried out on 11 March 2003.

This response from Witness G to the question in relation to the subscriber check being carried out in March 2003 was due to the MSK phone number appearing on Mohammed Quayyam Khan's billing prior to the beginning of Operation Crevice.

Q. You told us that one of the other investigative links to the man called Sidique Khan was the subscriber check on 11 March 2003 which showed that a phone was registered to his name and the address at 49A Bude Road, we know subsequently to have been the Iqra bookshop, and you, therefore, would have been able to assess that one of the calls made in July and August by Mohammed Qayum Khan, one of the participants in Crevice in the early days, was to that name and address?

A. (Witness nods).

Q. Why was a subscriber check being done in March if the calls from Mohammed Qayum Khan were not until July and August?

A. Because, at that point, we were reviewing earlier billing on Mohammed Qayum Khan on which that number came up.

Q. Oh, I see, so the Crevice operation, having started earlier in the year, had meant that there were checks from the very beginning going on in relation to calls made by the participants --

A. That's correct.

Q. -- which is why a check was made in March?

A. That's correct.

Q. So Crevice started long before July and August, towards the early part of 2003, in fact.

A. In the early part of 2003, yes.

Q. Before 11 March, presumably?

A. Yes, I can't remember the exact date, but certainly before then.

Q. But logically, it must have been before.

The ISC II report detailed timeline p58 makes the claim that the date of 13 July 2003 is significant in relation to MSK "as data from a mobile phone associated with MQK shows a number of calls with a telephone number MI5 had not seen before..... MI5 cannot match the name Siddique Khan with any on their databases and the contact is not investigated any further".

Do we now know that MI5 had seen this number before and the name MSK was presumably recorded in their databases from the check carried out on 11 March 2003? Why did the check on 13 July 2003 not flag this contact up?

Enlarge

This point was, sadly, clumsily handled by the seemingly pressurised O'Connor, who was faced with a mountain of evidence with which to question Witness G and a very short time allocated to him on 23rd February in which to do it:

Q. Could I go to a different topic, please, tab 7 in our core bundle? That is the subscriber check on 11 March 2003. This was kept on Security Service files, was it?

A. On Security Service records, yes.

Q. It's the -- I should identify it. It is SYS11076 [sYS11076-1] it's a subscriber check on 11 March 2003. I'll take you to the reference, if you wish, but ISC2 records when Crevice started as being late March 2003. Do you follow? I'll take to you the reference. It's page 57 in the hard copy, so page 64 of ISC2 which is INQ8305 [iNQ8305-63]. Do you see there's a time-line there?

A. I think I have a different one up.

Q. Late March 2003. Is that not -- I'm not saying it's a big error, but is that somewhat in error, then?

A. Well, that would be my view, yes. I mean, having looked at the early part of Crevice, I would have put it a little bit earlier than that.

Q. So that this document falls within Operation Crevice?

A. Yes.

Q. If we go to the next page in the ISC document, so that's page 65 , halfway down the first paragraph, 13 July 2003, if you glance down the first few --

A. I think we're working to different references. The 65 --

Q. I said page 65. It's page 64 [iNQ8305-64], I'm sorry, I'm adding seven -- that's what I've been consistently doing, if I'm wrong, I'm wrong. Page 64, then.

A. 13 July 2003, yes, I've got that.

Q. Yes, now, if you please glance down it, but if you go four or five lines down, it says: "MI5 cannot match the name 'Siddique Khan' [spelt with two Ds] with any in their databases ..." Do you see that?

A. Yes.

Q. Now, you had this telephone subscriber check in your records?

A. Yes, as I explain in, I think, my second statement, or possibly my third, the ISC is in error here because we didn't brief them correctly.

Q. Do you think you didn't brief the ISC correctly because there are two Ds rather than one? Do you see? You're checking, in July 2003, a number against Siddique Khan, two Ds, so that somebody has said, maybe accurately, that MI5 couldn't match Siddique, with two Ds, Khan?

A. No, we didn't brief them correctly because we'd misunderstood what our own records said and believed that this 11 March 2003 date for the check was an error and should have said July, but our reinvestigations recently confirm that 11 March is correct.

Q. So it's not that your systems were flummoxed by there being two Ds rather than one?

A. That's not relevant for the system we're talking about here. The error was ours in assuming that the 11 March date on this document was incorrect when it was, in fact, correct. [23 02 2011 p7:63]

If the honest intent of Witness G was to genuinely assist the Inquest process, he could have chosen to clarify quite why MI5 failed to pick up the name 'Sidique Khan' when searching on the phone number, rather than his name, and also why they claimed to the Intelligence & Security Committee that their checks in July 2003 failed to access and include the recorded March 2003 subscriber check held on their database. Instead, another question has been added into the mix: From where did the Siddique Khan name with two ds originate?

What is blatantly clear from this exchange, apart from the ISC II report being littered with errors, is that in July and August 2003, MI5 knew full well that Mohammed Quayyum Khan, aka 'Q', was in contact with at the very least the Iqra bookshop and, potentially, also in contact with Mohammed Sidique Khan. Given that intercept evidence cannot be used or referred to in proceedings, considered RIPA evidence, there is of course the question of the bugging of 'Q's phone and the fact that there was presumably full knowledge of precisely what was being said. Intercept evidence from phone bugging -- as used extensively during Operation Crevice -- is very likely the untouchable subject referred to in another dead-end exchange between O'Connor and Witness G:

Q. Can we find from here, therefore -- I'm not asking you for anything confidential, but in broad terms -- a pattern of mobile phone use between Mohammed Sidique Khan and Omar Khyam in the lead-up to each of these meetings?

A. Yes, that's fair.

Q. Good. That's what I thought I detected. I'm not going to go behind the redactions.

A. I would be grateful if you didn't.

Q. No, I'm not going to. So obviously somebody has, and you have, reviewed what is the sensitive aspect of this and what is in this document and what's been redacted. Can I ask you this, though, because it's obviously not sensitive that there is this pattern, do you understand: was there similar contact before 21 February 2004?

MR EADIE: My Lady, that's very problematic, or it may be.

MR PATRICK O'CONNOR: Why? It's the same principle. Why is this more secret than what the witness has accepted?

LADY JUSTICE HALLETT: I think you'd better allow Mr Keith or Mr O'Connor to whisper certain letters in your ear, Mr O'Connor.

MR KEITH: We can't whisper anything, I'm afraid, because that would be equally impermissible.

LADY JUSTICE HALLETT: If supposing, though, that something existed ...

MR KEITH: Could my learned friend ask the question and then we will reassess or rephrase it and then we will see where we need to go thereafter?

MR PATRICK O'CONNOR: Fine. My Lady, what I'm very happy to do is I will rephrase it, just on my feet, and then leave it, everyone can think about it, perhaps speak to me in general terms over the luncheon adjournment and that's it.

....

LADY JUSTICE HALLETT: Anyway, try the question again to see whether we can avoid offending any of my rulings, statutory instruments, Parliament Acts, whatever.

MR PATRICK O'CONNOR: Was there any mobile phone contact between a mobile phone attributed to Mohammed Sidique Khan and a mobile phone attributed to Omar Khyam which took place on 20 or 21 February 2004?

A. My Lady, for the reasons you've identified, I don't know whether I can answer this question. [ibid p67:21]

Passports Pakistan and PISCES

One of the other issues examined in relation to Mohammed Junaid Babar was a statement he gave in April/May 2004 regarding meeting with certain members of the 'Crevice plot' at Islamabad airport in June and July of 2003. It was plain that the two men Babar identified as 'Ibrahim' and 'Zubair' could have been identified by accessing the travel information between the UK and Pakistan of Jawad Akbar who was already in custody after the 30 March 2004 Crevice arrests and whose passport details were known. Again J7 were compelled to communicate with the Coroner and Counsel and sent the following communication when Eadie and 'G' sought to confirm how difficult such a process would be:

On 23 February, Mr Eadie questioned how information on travel to and from Pakistan could be acquired by the police:

22 Do you also know -- and, again, say if you don't and

23 we can do some further research -- how the information

24 about Mr Akbar's travel was actually acquired by the

25 police?

90

1 A. I do not, no.

2 Q. You don't know what level of detailed work, diplomatic

3 efforts and mutual legal assistance, treaty requests,

4 had to be made to secure that information?

5 A. I do not, no.

Yet on 19/07/05, 3 days after the formal identification of MSK, the media were able to report all the details of Khan & Tanweer's travel to and from Pakistan including stopovers in Turkey, flight numbers and images from PISCES from November 2004. Passport numbers were also released.

Daily Mirror 19/07/2005

The opening statement of the Crevice trial stated:

86. This is a Time Chart or Time Line. It has, as you will see on the front page, a line alongside each defendant and some other individuals who feature. The purpose of the chart is to indicate, so far as records are available, entry into and departure from, Pakistan. If we go to page 7 for example, we find we are in the period June and July 2003. That was, you may remember, a period of some significance because according to Babar, that was when the Malakand training camp took place.

87. Against that background we see Khyam and Garcia are indeed in Pakistan. If we go back to page 6 we see Khyam arrived on 7 May; if we go back to page 5 we see Garcia arrived on 10 February. Reverting to page 7 we see Shujah arrived on 27 June, with his digital scales you may recall.

88. Jawad Akbar arrived later on 25 July and Khawaja a little earlier on 16 July - they attended later than the first batch you will recall. This chart is dependent upon records - passports and a system called PISCES which Pakistan had introduced only in the last two or three years and not at all airports. Accordingly the records may not be complete and may not cover someone - Amin may be an example - who has been in Pakistan on a long term basis.

As indicated above this information was gathered by the use of passport numbers and PISCES without the use of flight manifests.

J7 could also have detailed an even earlier report that appeared in the Times on 18 July 2005 which also revealed these flight details, and it would be interesting to know The Times' source for this information, particularly if the source was, as is likely, the security services.

Taking the PISCES

PISCES is a system set up in Pakistan by the FBI/CIA to enable live monitoring of passengers through Pakistan's airports. A Times of India report details the link between PISCES and FBI/CIA systems:

The Personal Identification Secure Comparison Evaluation System (PISCES), an automated border control system, is being implemented in 20 ports of immigration in Pakistan.

According to latest information, all points of entry and exit in Pakistan would have PISCES system by Dec 31, 2004.

PISCES is being installed in over a dozen high risk countries of the world at America's instance. However, in Pakistan's case, Timesofindia.com has detailed American plans showing that PISCES is being linked up to Pakistan's internal national information making the situation much more complex.

According to the Mission Performance Plan set by the US embassy in Islamabad, America is presently involved deeply in prodding and forcing Pakistani authorities to develop national intelligence and criminal databases which did not exist till 2001.

Surprisingly this database is linked to the PISCES border control system which is in the hands of US officials.

In the mission document targets, by 2004 end the PISCES system would be "fully operational and integrated with National Crisis Management Cell's intelligence and investigative database".

In 2003, the US embassy was aiming to develop "fully functional intelligence and investigative database" link between provincial Crime Investigation Departments and National Crisis Management cell".

And in 2003 itself, the American plan reveals: "intelligence and investigative database linked with other similar programs, including PISCES border control system."

Startlingly, only in 2005 will Pakistan assume "responsibility for continued operation of PISCES system."

Till then, the US counter-terrorism officials would have control over the sophisticated system that not only records details of every person leaving or entering Pakistan, but would also transmit these details to the central servers of FBI and CIA back in the US.

Details of PISCES installation are detailed in the Mission Performance Plan for 2004, prepared about a year after 9/11 in 2002, and in possession of Timesofindia.com .

Besides PISCES, thousands of closed circuit television networks are being installed across Pakistan.

Over the last two years US policies regarding Pakistan have been unfolding as scripted in the Mission Performance Plan for 2004.

An article on the implementation of PISCES in Malta in 2004 claims:

FBI may have its bugs on Malta’s arrivals and departures

The information on travellers collected by the Personal Identification Secure Comparison and Evaluation System (PISCES), donated to Malta by the United States, is liable to be shared with the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s database and other intelligence agencies, according to a report by the US Congressional Research Service seen by MaltaToday.

PISCES, a $1.5 million (Lm700,000) software package which forms part of the US Department of State’s Terrorist Interdiction Programme, is designed to monitor and restrict the movement of terrorists and other criminals across borders by making real-time comparisons of photographs and other personal details with the FBI database, and analyse traveller information to identify and intercept terrorist suspects.

Malta is in fact the only EU Member State to have allowed the installation of PISCES at all its transit points, namely Malta International Airport, the Sea Passenger Terminal, Ta’ Xbiex Marina and the Gozo ferry terminal.

According to a US Congress report seen by MaltaToday on Pakistan-US Anti-Terrorism Co-operation, PISCES can make “real-time comparisons of photographs and other personal details with the FBI database in order to track the movements of Islamic militants”, as well as containing data on worldwide bomb explosions.

Strange how such a major counter-terrorism system has failed to reach the ears or eyes of as senior a member of MI5 as Witness G:

MR PATRICK O'CONNOR: Right. Was there any system of record-keeping -- it wasn't the Border Agency then, I don't think, in 2001, 2004, 2005, 2003 -- but was there any system of record-keeping -- bare record-keeping -- of departures and arrivals at UK border points?

A. I'm afraid you'd need an expert from the Home Office or the Passport Office or whatever, but my view, based on my limited knowledge of these things, is that they were not, at this time, recording departures from the UK routinely of British citizens, but that is not a certain answer, Mr O'Connor.

Q. Right. Have you heard of something called Operation Theseus?

A. I have.

Q. Is that a system run by the Pakistani -- Pisces, I'm getting muddled.

A. I haven't.

Q. You haven't heard of Operation Pisces. So I can't ask you anything about that?

A. I'm afraid you can't, no.

Q. Right. I'll state the point, because, my Lady, I'm not being as clear as I might be. The proposition is that the Pakistani authorities, from at least 2002, kept a record of arrivals and departures through all the major airports, including Islamabad, which is the relevant one, and the Security Service has a close liaison partnership with the Pakistani authorities, doesn't it?

A. The UK authorities do, yes.

Q. Is it right that if you asked or instigated a request from the Pakistan authorities for information from any such system, you would expect it to be answered cooperatively by the Pakistani authorities?

A. I don't know, to be honest, Mr O'Connor. It would depend what the question was.

Q. This is not a highly sensitive piece of information to pass to the Security Service here, is it?

A. It really would depend on what the piece of the information was and how the Pakistanis felt.

Why would Witness G choose to claim no knowledge of PISCES in 2011, some 7 years after its implementation? Why would he choose not to assist counsel for the bereaved families by outlining what is commonly known about this system? Frankly, if Witness G is unaware of the PISCES system then he is in the wrong job.

Mr Eadie began the afternoon of the final day's hearing on Preventability by submitting a supplementary response from Witness 'G' into the proceedings which only led to more obfuscation of the issue about whether PISCES was easily accessible and how data from it was accessed in respect of Jawad Akbar's travel to Pakistan:

MR EADIE: Witness G, have you, overnight, had cause to have some researches conducted into what we are calling the manifest point?

A. I have.

Q. Is the product of those researches contained in a --

MR KEITH: It's on the system, if my learned friend needs it, at temp 2.

MR EADIE: Can we have that up on the screen, please [sYS-manifest document]? I don't know if we can blow that up a little. It's not very legible. G, I want particularly to focus, if I may, on paragraph 3 of that document, taking the rest of it as read, as it were. So far as that is concerned, is it your understanding that a formal request was made by the Metropolitan Police post-arrest in order to obtain details about Akbar's travel?

A. It is my understanding.

Q. What was the date on which that request was made?

A. June 2005.

Q. When was a response received from the Pakistani authorities in relation to that?

A. That was received in September 2005.

Q. Is that the date we see in subparagraph (d) of paragraph 3?

A. It is.

Q. In order to produce that result, had the Pakistani authorities simply gone to an airline and got the manifest details with a list of all the passengers?

A. They had not.

Q. What had they gone to?

A. They had interrogated their system, Pisces.

Q. What does that give you?

A. Pisces, as I understand it, is a central system operated by the Pakistani authorities which will offer a date and time of passing through immigration control for named individuals, not flight manifests.

Q. As part of that, as we see from paragraph 3(a), the form in which that request was made was by way of a request for mutual legal assistance, was it?

A. That is correct.

Q. The response that came back was, what? It was in the form of a statement, according to 3©. Is that right?

A. That's my understanding.

Q. That gave a flight number and carrier and route?

A. That is correct.

Q. As a result of that, the Met made further enquiries; yes?

A. That's correct.

Q. Those are set out in subparagraph (e) of paragraph 3. Is that right?

A. They are.

Q. As a result of that, because those enquiries were carried out after the 7/7 attacks, it was by that date known that Ibrahim was, in fact, MSK. Is that right?

A. That is correct.

Q. It was through that route, and that route only, that they arrived at MSK being on that flight?

A. That is correct.

Q. Could we go to the next page, please, on the screen? Is the point that is the core point that's being made in paragraph 4 that SYS wouldn't have had any reason, prior to March 2005, to make a any sort of similar request to the Pakistani authorities? Why is that?

A. Because we wouldn't have required that for intelligence purposes, unlike the Met requiring it for evidential purposes.

Q. What's the significance of the March 2005 date?

A. In March 2005, that's when we received the additional information from Mohammed Junaid Babar.

Q. If you had made a similar request, does paragraph 5 then set out the additional steps that you would have needed to take in order to achieve an identification result?

A. Yes, I think that's correct.

Q. Paragraph 6 looks, unless I'm missing something, to be something of a repetition of what we've already seen in paragraph 3: namely, the date of the request by the Met and the date on which the response was given. Is that right?

A. Yes, that's correct.

Q. Then in paragraph 7, you deal with the most likely mechanism for seeking to establish the identity of Ibrahim, which was through photographs. Is that right?

A. That's correct.

Q. Rather than this sort of, as we now know it would have to have been, convoluted process?

A. That's correct.

Q. In any event, paragraph 8 is dealing with whether or not you had enough specific details at the time to make a sensible interrogation of the Pakistani authorities even assuming that time and everything else permitted?

A. That's correct.

MR EADIE: I'm grateful. Thank you, Witness G. [24/02/11 p1:19]

Witness G is claiming that a multi-million dollar system installed by the US could not have been accessed simply through searching for a passport number or a known flight number and/or date for the passengers that had passed through, despite all this information being stored by the system. 'G' also claims that this could only be accessed through the hard copy of Javad Akbar's passport which showed an entry stamp for 25 July 2003. This hardly answers how Mohammed Siddique Khan's and Shehzad Tanweer's flight details were printed in the Times just 11 days after 7/7, on 18 July 2005.

Not to be deterred O'Connor attempted one last time to clarify how PISCES could have been interrogated to enable the identification of 'Ibrahim' and 'Zubair' between March 2004 and July 2005. This exchange also reveals some of the assumptions that Justice Hallett is content to make over this issue and is a cause of concern in anticipating how she will rule and on what basis at the end of these proceedings, which should only be on fact and evidence not assumption. It also reveals some of the frustrations and tensions that have built up over 'G's extended appearance and the pressures that have arisen in the short time allowed for Mr O'Connor to make essential points to the Inquests:

Q. Finally, this gist gives us a helpful indication through other enquiries that were made about the time lag that in fact happened between the enquiry of the Pakistan authorities in June 2005, about Akbar, and the witness statement being produced on 6 September 2005. Do you follow?

A. I do.

Q. Query, do you allow the receipt of the formal witness statement may not actually reflect precisely the receipt of the bare information. It's possible that was communicated --

LADY JUSTICE HALLETT: Wait a minute, Mr O'Connor, I'm sorry, I'm stopping you here. This was a request made by UK authorities after London had just been blown up.

MR PATRICK O'CONNOR: Oh yes, yes, yes.

LADY JUSTICE HALLETT: You cannot ask me to find as a fact that you'd have received the same kind of rapid cooperation if some kind of request had been sent years before in relation to somebody they didn't really know much about. I'm sorry, that is not a good point and I am not going to allow you to pursue it.

MR PATRICK O'CONNOR: My Lady, the point is, in fact, the opposite. This is my last question, my Lady, and I have a document to go to, so we're talking about, once I ask this question --

LADY JUSTICE HALLETT: All right, carry on.

MR PATRICK O'CONNOR: My Lady, may I explain why it's the opposite? Because it's the very fact that Akbar is in custody and the authorities had this information from his passport anyway, as this gist points out. So this enquiry was not actually urgent and, by contrast, the enquiry about Ibrahim was because he's free and potentially a threat. Does my Lady see the point?

LADY JUSTICE HALLETT: Mr O'Connor, unless I'm going to ask Witness G to take me through the kind of time-lag you get from requests to foreign countries we will be here for, I suspect, days. I have done a number of cases involving requests to foreign countries. I suspect you have too. And the response from foreign countries varies enormously, depending on the circumstances, both in our country, in their countries, and their response. I am not going to enable you to make a bad point without saying to Witness G: go away and get me the evidence about the average response time to an ordinary request to Pakistan.

MR PATRICK O'CONNOR: My Lady, I'm sorry, but the tension between us at this moment is entirely a result of the way this morning was very substantially expended without very much product. My Lady, I would like, please -- there is going to be no such explanation as you fear. There is one document which illustrates my point very simply and clearly. Can I ask for it to be put up, we'll see it and we'll see the time-lag?

LADY JUSTICE HALLETT: You can ask for it to be put up, because I'm going to let you just have this one last piece of leeway. If you describe a tension, it is because parties -- wrongly, in my view, and wrongly in law -- have been treating these proceedings as if they are adversarial. They have been accusing Counsel to the Inquests of asking questions with a particular motive in mind.

MR PATRICK O'CONNOR: We haven't, my Lady.

LADY JUSTICE HALLETT: Mr O'Connor, may I finish, please?

MR PATRICK O'CONNOR: Yes.

LADY JUSTICE HALLETT: They act for me and they do not take sides, and if tension is arising in these proceedings, I attribute it solely to the way some parties have been treating these proceedings. So could we please all allow the temperatures to calm or to lower and for everybody's tempers to calm down and to focus on the issues which can properly be put to the witnesses. Right, you have two minutes.

MR PATRICK O'CONNOR: Could we please have [iNQ9398-2] up,please? Could it be expanded? Do you see this is a Pisces answer to a request for information?

A. So it appears to me. I'm not familiar with these.

Q. You see that it is a reply of 22 August 2005.

A. Is that in the top right, Mr O'Connor? I can barely read it.

Q. I agree. Do you see "Available query particulars, query date 22 August 2005"?

A. Yes.

Q. And you see "deputy command", blah blah blah,"Islamabad, through Pisces via letter", blah blah blah, "dated 22 August 2005"?

A. No, I'm afraid I can't read the second bit, but I'm assuming that is what it says.

Q. That is what it says. Do you agree this query is very likely to have been sent after the 7 July bombings, there's no reason for it to have been sent before?

A. It is likely, but I do not know.

Q. If this answer -- I've asked Mr Hill to help us on this, and Mr Hill is nodding, my Lady, I asked him earlier today to save time -- but if this answer is dated 22 August 2005, it shows that there's a time-lag of some six weeks or so, seven weeks perhaps. Is that right?

MR HILL: Can I help?

MR PATRICK O'CONNOR: Thank you.

MR HILL: Request made on 1 August, answered on the 22nd.

MR PATRICK O'CONNOR: Three weeks. My Lady, I apologise for going beyond the two minutes, but it has established something which is informative and takes us well, well, well beneath the four months appearing in this gist in relation to those other enquiries. That's all I ask. Thank you. [ibid p8:10]

Enlarge

This still doesn't explain how the Times was reporting this information on 18/07/2005 when the Metropolitan Police Service hadn't received this response until 22/08/2005!

In a final desperate bid to get clarity on the issue of being able to know - in the case of someone who is suspected of involvement with terrorism - their movements in and out of the UK without the use of intrusive action (as claimed by 'G' in point 8 of this witness statement) O'Connor makes an appeal to Justice Hallett for this question to be asked of the Security Services:

MR PATRICK O'CONNOR: The ideal answer would be: with the passport number and date of birth of a terrorism suspect we can tag that passport number and name and date of birth on a computer system and, when somebody travels -- I know I'm not going to get this, but this is the ideal -- when somebody travels, leaves Heathrow and arrives in Pakistan, we know about it. Now, I can't be told all of that, but the thrust and common sense of it is: actually, we have a facility which is regularly used, which can easily be used, not intrusive actions at all, whereby we can monitor the movements of terrorism suspects. Now, my Lady's, I'm sure, got the point, it can be formulated much better than I've formulated it now.

LADY JUSTICE HALLETT: For a start, before anybody goes off with the idea that is the case --

MR PATRICK O'CONNOR: Yes, I agree. I --

LADY JUSTICE HALLETT: Pause. We don't know that that was the case back in 2004/2005, and we don't know whether the kind of actions you're describing do come within the kind of material which the authorities would rather I dealt with in closed session.

MR PATRICK O'CONNOR: I understand. That precise, detailed information could well raise public interest immunity issues, but some piece of information, which will assist my Lady to reach a fair conclusion as to the facility with which that kind of tracking could be done at the time without setting out how it was actually done, and the way the state of play at the moment is, well, it's all disproportionate and may involve intrusive actions and really it's not really on.

LADY JUSTICE HALLETT: Right, so the question would be: was there an ability to monitor the international travel of Mohammed Sidique Khan by name --

MR PATRICK O'CONNOR: Yes.

LADY JUSTICE HALLETT: -- and passport number?

MR PATRICK O'CONNOR: Yes. [ibid p113:5]

J7 suggest that the actual answer as to whether a known suspect can be monitored on entry or exit from the UK will be a resounding 'Yes' - especially when travelling to or from Pakistan. That was, after all, one of the primary requirements for and functions of PISCES intended to benefit the Intelligence agencies. Where this information will matter is when DCS McKenna of the Metropolitan Police gives evidence about Operation Theseus on 3rd March as the final witness to face the 7/7 Inquests.

J7 asked in our submission to the Inquests quite how Mohammed Junaid Babar was able to enter and exit the UK at least 3 times without coming to the attention of the Intelligence Services. This brings us on to the issue of the FBI and possible CIA involvement in Operation Crevice.

The FBI

Peter Taylor Report, BBC News from J7 Truth Campaign on Vimeo.

From 11 February 2004 an Executive Liaison Group met daily to discuss Operation Crevice, these meetings were chaired by DAC Peter Clarke. As reported by Peter Taylor in the news report embedded above, there was constant live intelligence shared between the FBI and their counterparts in the UK and we suggest this also included input into these ELG meetings. If Mohammed Junaid Babar was not working for the FBI in February 2004 what precisely merited the involvement of the US in what was perceived to be a domestic threat to the UK by UK citizens?

Part II to follow

Posted by Bridget at 2/27/2011 08:00:00 PM 0 comments Email This BlogThis! Share to Twitter Share to Facebook Share to Google Buzz Links to this post

Labels: 7/7, 7/7 Inquest, FBI, Fertiliser Bomb Plot, London bombings, MI5, Mohammed Junaid Babar, Mohammed Sidique Khan, Operation Crevice, Patrick O'Connor QC

Friday, February 18, 2011McDaid Who?

"McDaid who?" would be the majority of people's response if you mentioned the name McDaid in connection with the events in London on 7th July 2005. Yet Martin 'Abdullah' McDaid is a name that has emerged recently at the 7/7 Inquests. Due in no small part to the following section of the submission on 'Preventability' that J7 prepared and dispatched to the Inquests' coroner and counsel:

HELL'S ANGELS, THE TARTAN TALIBAN, AND THE SBS

A former Hell's Angel who worked at the Iqra bookshop in Leeds, Martin Gilbertson, claims that the most vocal of all those he worked with was not any of the four accused but a white convert to Islam; ex-SBS soldier and anti-terrorist operative Martin 'Abdullah' McDaid. Gilbertson said,

“Martin 'Abdullah' McDaid did most of the talking, most of the ranting and raving; and as an ex-Marine, he knew about matters military.”24

Given his background, McDaid has featured surprisingly little in connection with the story of 7/7. McDaid's apparent volte-face conversion from one of the highest levels of Defence of the Realm to 'radical Islamism', is still something of an unexplained and largely uninvestigated mystery. Also in close proximity to the four accused is another white convert to Islam, James McLintock, also with links to the Iqra bookshop. McLintock is a former fighter with the Mujahideen, also known by the Islamic name Mohammed Yacoub/Yaqub, and who has been arrested on separate occasions “on suspicion of terrorist activities”25, usually in the vicinity of Afghanistan/Pakistan border.

Have any of these individuals been questioned by police in connection with 7/7?

Gilbertson told a Guardian journalist,

“I spent a lot of time repairing their PCs, and clearing viruses they had picked up from Jihad websites, put there, I think, by the Americans. When the Jihad sites were closed down, they were often replaced by pornographic sites, again - I think - by the Americans. At one point, the police took McDaid's Laptop computer and stripped it down - I had to repair it. Naveed also had his home computer taken by the police, and I helped him build a new one.”26

In a separate interview with BBC Newsnight's Richard Watson, Gilbertson revealed that the seizure of computers happened in early 2004.27

Why has there never been any mention of the police seizure of computers from the Iqra in early 2004? When did this raid take place? What prompted the raid? What information and data was garnered from these computers and how was it acted upon?

Footnotes

24 'When I heard where the bombers were from I felt sick' | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited

25 Profile: James McLintock - Times Online

26 'When I heard where the bombers were from I felt sick' | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited

27 YouTube - 7.7 London Suicide Bombers

Martin 'Abdullah' McDaid

Martin Gilbertson's claim that he was so concerned about the goings-on at the Iqra bookshop in Beeston -- a claim which played out in the media to include Mohammed Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer -- that he contacted West Yorkshire Police in 2003 was thoroughly discredited by counsels to the Inquests, the bereaved and West Yorkshire Police. Gilbertson's statements to the police, one of which was taken over two days in a hotel because Gilbertson 'feared for his safety', and his testimony to the Inquests, came under close scrutiny and sustained attack until he was eventually asked by Mr Beggs, counsel for West Yorkshire Police:

Q. Is that because, Mr Gilbertson, the sad truth is that you are an egocentric self-publicist, a fantasist, exaggerator, speculator, irresponsible individual?

Source: Hearing Transcripts 16 February 2011

Afternoon, page 72 lines 18 - 20

Whether Gilbertson did or did not attempt to warn West Yorkshire Police in 2003 about the Iqra bookshop in Beeston is truly a red herring, particularly if information revealed to the Inquests during his testimony is correct. Hugo Keith informed Gilbertson and the public of the following:

Q. It's a significant issue, Mr Gilbertson, you must be aware, because although it's perhaps less important now because my Lady and the parties in these proceedings are now aware that McDaid was known to the Security Service and West Yorkshire Police since at least 1998, and suspected of being involved in extremist activities since then, you have alleged repeatedly, outside these proceedings, to the press and elsewhere, that you attempted to bring your concerns about radical extremism to the attention of the police.[ibid p52:8]

West Yorkshire Police and the 'Security Services' knew all about Martin McDaid and Iqra, so why the need for this farce? Instead of the media covering Gilbertson's 'warning West Yorkshire Police' over the 5½ years since 7/7, why haven't we been hearing about what they already knew and what they had apparently known for some 7 years before 7th July 2005?

When the BBC's Richard Watson was interviewing Martin Gilbertson for one of Watson's regular 'jihadi network' Newsnight pieces, why wasn't he asking about McDaid or at least contacting West Yorkshire Police or his many contacts inside MI5 to ask them what was already known? Why the cover-up and why the secrecy?

Martin Gilbertson interviewed on Newsnight. from J7 Truth Campaign on Vimeo.

Richard Watson reporting on BBC Newsnight 9th May 2007.

Mark Hargreaves, a youth worker who gave evidence to the Inquests prior to Gilbertson, described how he began working with Martin McDaid in 2001, as well as a previously unmentioned individual, Max Gillespie also known as Abdul Rahman:

Q. In your statement to the police, you describe how, when you did start to work with them at Tempest Road, you worked in a room in the rear of the building and you saw hateful, deeply offensive pictures and videos, and these were shown to you by the person you knew to be called Martin McDaid. Is that right?

A. Yes.

Q. Did you see where this material was coming from or where it was going?

A. As far as where it came was concerned, I have no idea, but there were a number of times when they told me they were travelling of a weekend to other cities to distribute this material to other Iqra bookshops indeed.

Q. When you say they told you, who were they?

A. That would be Martin McDaid and Max Gillespie, who was also known as "Abdulraqman"*.

Q. Did you gain any understanding of where precisely the material was being distributed, which parts of the country, for example?

A. Two that I recall clearly. One was Glasgow and the other one was Birmingham. [ibid p6:16]

Q. In summary, you describe in your statement how it was obvious to you that this individual, McDaid, was whipping up hatred. Is that a view that you adhere to now, you're still of that view, that that was what was being done?

A. Yes, definitely. [p13:4]

* the name given by Hargreaves was definitely Abdul Rahman

Rewind to the outlining of Preventability issues at the Inquests and Martin McDaid's name is first mentioned in connection with Beeston and Iqra by Hugo Keith on 2 February 2011:

My Lady, may I now turn to the issue of preventability? This issue concerns whether the atrocities on 7 July could reasonably have been prevented by way of some sort of intervention by the Security Service or the police, in essence the state. [p88:20]

.... West Yorkshire Police to a number of people, including a suspected extremist called McDaid on account of their joint attendance at a training camp in the Lake District in January 2001. Mohammed Sidique Khan had also attended the camp and a photograph was taken of him but a source to whom West Yorkshire Police subsequently showed the photo failed to recognise or identify him. Some time after the camp, in April 2003, McDaid was seen briefly to get into a car that subsequent checks established was a car registered to a Mr Sidique Khan of 11 Gregory Street. [p98:1]

This at least fills in some of the redactions (perhaps) in the ISC II report:

enlarge

Link

A joint West Yorkshire Police and MI5 operation named Operation Warlock was active in the area from at least January 2001. Although McDaid was known to MI5 and West Yorkshire Police as far back as 1998, the two people we can surmise from Inquests evidence that were under surveillance were Tafazal Mohammed and Martin 'Abdullah' McDaid. This is the same Tafazal Mohammed that set up and ran the Iqra bookshop and learning centre at which ex-SBS McDaid was 'whipping up hatred'. Did West Yorkshire Police and MI5 really need Gilbertson's DVDs and evidence to know what was going on there?

According to the ISC timeline above, checks were carried out on Khan's BMW on 16 April 2003 after he was seen giving a lift to the 'known extremist' McDaid. Khan was assessed as having no significance following a two day joint West Yorkshire Police/MI5 surveillance operation, Operation Honeysuckle, which ran on 14/15 April 2003. By coincidence. or perhaps not, the very same date a camping trip run by Max Gillespie/Abdul Rahman, and attended by at least Tafazal if not McDaid also, took place:

Enlarge

Link

Were photographs taken of this camp in the same way that they were during the 'Operation Warlock' Lake District camp in 2001? Note that Operation Warlock apparently failed to identify Mohammed Sidique Khan, despite the image below, seemingly excised from video surveillance footage captured on a 3-hour long tape.

Information garnered during 'Operation Honeysuckle' was adduced in a summary prepared for the Inquests by West Yorkshire Police. The summary identifies 49 Bude Road, the Iqra bookshop and charity, and shows the association with McDaid is clearly known:

Enlarge

Link

The West Yorkshire Police summary also highlights that the charity registration details and the trustees of the Iqra charity were investigated. Mohammed Sidique Khan was an Iqra trustee in 2003, so once again his name was also known:

Enlarge

Link

Information passed to J7 revealed that the 'security services' tipped off a newspaper in 2002 with information about Martin McDaid. Although the original article is not available online, it was referenced in a Times article of June 2006 which examined Gilbertson's story:

Contrary to the government’s claims, this hotbed of extremism had not gone unnoticed by MI5. In early 2002 a source within the security services was sufficiently concerned about McDaid to tip off a journalist on this newspaper about him. The source alleged that young Muslims were being taken on outdoor pursuits courses as part of training for possible terrorist attacks. Inquiries were made but nobody in the local community was willing to talk.

The tip-off was that McDaid, the ex-Special Boat Service soldier cum 'radical' 'extremist' convert to Islam, was training people in the countryside. However, the security services refused to provide a picture of McDaid to accompany the story, suggesting that the security services were happy for the legend about a 'Muslim' 'extremist' "training for possible terrorist attacks" to be known, but without anyone being able to identify him by appearance. J7's source believes that McDaid's name (without an accompanying identifying photograph) was only passed to the newspaper to provide cover and credibility for McDaid within the local community.

From the ISC report we also note that between Operation Warlock (2001) and Operation Honeysuckle (2003) another operation began in late March 2003. This was Operation Crevice, which was to lead, a year later, to the arrests and prosecution of the 'fertiliser bomb plot', a prosecution in which Mohammed Junaid Babar played a central part by testifying against the accused. At around the same time (Spring 2003 according to the Metropolitan Police Service) Mohammed Junaid Babar was engaged in his second trip to the UK during which he apparently met with Mohammed Sidique Khan in Leeds. This was in April 2003 according to Hassan Butt. Who else did Mohammed Junaid Babar travel to Leeds to meet? Was Babar in the locality around the time of Operation Honeysuckle, the 14-15 April 2003?

Operation Crevice was initially and apparently an investigation into Mohammed Quayyam Khan aka 'Q'. J7 also highlighted the dubious credentials of 'Q' in our submission to the Inquests regarding issues of Preventability:

During the 2007 trial of the Crevice suspects, it was claimed that the mysterious figure known as 'Q'7, later identified as Mohammed Quayyum Khan, had recruited both Mohammad Sidique Khan and Omar Khyam; the latter of whom is the alleged ringleader of the fertiliser bomb plot investigated via Operation Crevice. Questions were asked after the Crevice trial regarding why 'Q' was not arrested along with the others.

BBC Panorama reporter, Peter Taylor, challenged DAC Peter Clarke with the following questions during an episode entitled 'Real Spooks'8, broadcast in May 2007:

TAYLOR: Why was 'Q' never arrested?

CLARKE: Decisions are made during the course of investigation based upon the evidence that's available, and the decision as to who should be arrested is based entirely upon what evidence is available at the time.

TAYLOR: Was 'Q' not arrested possibly because he was working for you or MI5?

CLARKE: I'm not prepared to comment on any speculation like that. It's pure speculation.

TAYLOR: Where is 'Q' now?

CLARKE: I said I'm not prepared to talk about 'Q'.

A simple, “No.” from Clarke might have sufficed if indeed it was the case that 'Q' had no connection to the police or security services.

Was Mohammed Quayyum Khan ever questioned or investigated in connection to 7th July? Why wasn't he included on the blacklists of al-Qaeda financiers

Footnotes

7 Bomb plotters' al-Qa'eda 'link' still in Britain - Telegraph

8 BBC NEWS | Programmes | Panorama | Real Spooks: transcript

Information about Operation Crevice contained within the ISC report directly linked Mohammed Sidique Khan to 'Q' through a number of July 2003 phone calls to a phone registered in Mohammed Sidique Khan's name to 49a Bude Road. 49a Bude Road is of course the address of the Iqra bookshop of which, in 2003, Mohammed Sidique Khan was a trustee.

So, the ISC's seemingly direct link may not be as direct as they suggest. The phone may well have been used as an all purpose phone on the Iqra premises, rather than a 'personal' phone used solely by Mohammed Sidique Khan. Khan may well have just happened to be the person who registered the phone on behalf of Iqra and the calls could have been received by anyone on the premises. Despite MI5's claims that the name Sidique Khan didn't match any on file -- even though his car registration was noted and traced to him on 16 April 2003 -- the 'Security Services' would certainly have known about and been interested in the address of the Iqra bookshop, particularly if they had been monitoring McDaid since 1998, and as a result of the names of the registered charity trustees they garnered from Operation Honeysuckle.

Did the running of two separate operations, Crevice and Honeysuckle, preclude the ability for either single operation to comprehend the bigger picture, or perhaps allow for State assets to operate effectively in the shadows of each surveillance operation? With all the various individuals apparently under surveillance as far back as 7 years before July 2005, yet none of them apprehended in time to prevent the events of 7/7, this would appear to be the case.

The Inquests will need to fill in some of the other redacted information in relation to 'Q' especially if this leads back to Junaid Babar or indeed Martin McDaid:

Enlarge

Link

Mohammed Junaid Babar - an FBI/CIA asset; 'Q' - an MI5 asset, and Martin 'Abdullah' McDaid, an ex-Special Boat Service anti-terrorist operative and 'convert' to Islam that MI5 were happy to tip off The Times about, all just one step removed from those accused of perpetrating the attacks of 7 July 2005... well, figure it out for yourself.

When considering the information above, it is worth bearing in mind that the Secret Services honed their modus operandi in the 6 counties of Eire. It is now known that many in the Provisional IRA leadership were in fact British agents. A previous Special Boat Service operative (the SBS being an elite regiment of 250 of the Queen's finest, in the same mode as the SAS) was John Joe Magee - the IRA's 'Angel of Death'.

As Gilbertson found out to his cost, 'only the truth stands up under scrutiny'. The same goes for MI5 when their chosen Corporate Spook is called to give testimony next week.

Rest assured, J7 will be subjecting their testimony to scrutiny!

"Truth does not fear investigation."

Posted by Bridget at 2/18/2011 02:22:00 PM 20 comments Email This BlogThis! Share to Twitter Share to Facebook Share to Google Buzz Links to this post

Labels: 7 July Inquests, 7/7 Inquest, James McLintock, London bombings, Martin Gilbertson, Martin McDaid, MI5, Mohammed Sidique Khan

Monday, February 14, 2011A cat amongst the [stool] pigeons - Mohammed Junaid Babar

An article in today's Guardian asks some of the questions that J7 posed to the 7/7 Inquests when we sent our submission on Preventability to the coroner and counsel in July 2010.

In light of the Guardian series of articles regarding this issue, we reproduce below our submission listing the serious issues that arise from the role that Mohammed Junaid Babar has played in the events of not only 7th July 2005 but also the so-called 'fertilizer bomb plot', apparently scuppered by Operation Crevice, and also the incarceration of Fahad Hashmi:

CREVICE TRIAL

Without the testimony of 'Supergrass' Mohammed Junaid Babar at the Crevice trial, would there have been enough evidence against these men to merit the 40 year life sentences they received? Especially given the statement read on behalf of these men at the end of the Crevice trial explicitly denied that there was any plot to attack the UK:

This was a prosecution driven by the security services, able to hide behind a cloak of secrecy, and eager to obtain ever greater resources and power to encroach on individual rights.

There was no limit to the money, resources and underhand strategies that were used to secure convictions in this case.

This case was brought in an atmosphere of hostility against Muslims, at home, and abroad. One stoked by this government throughout the course of this case.

This prosecution involved extensive intrusion upon personal lives, not only ours, but our families and friends.

Coached witnesses were brought forward. Forced confessions were gained through illegal detention, and torture abroad. Threats and intimidation was used to hamper the truth. All with the trial judge seemingly intent to assist the prosecution almost every step of the way.

These were just some of the means used in the desperate effort to convict. Anyone looking impartially at the evidence would realise that there was no conspiracy to cause explosions in the UK, and that we did not pose any threat to the security of this country.

It is not an offence to be young, Muslim and angry at the global injustices against Muslims."9

WIDER CONNECTIONS

The section in the Provisional Index of Factual Issues entitled “Preventability” comprises by far the bulk of the index. Further, the bulk of areas outlined in points 13-23 relate directly to just two of the accused, Khan and Tanweer, and their interactions with others connected to Operation Crevice, notably, and mostly, Omar Khyam. There are wider connections over and above those between Khan (now deceased) and Khyam (serving a life sentence, received in no small part due to the testimony of the prosecution's 'star witness'14 Junaid Babar), featuring individuals that appear to create and facilitate links between disparate individuals and groups across continents, and we outline these for informational purposes below. Many of these individuals appear to have protected status in that they have either never been arrested or have miraculously evaded prosecution over a period of time when many lesser figures were rendered to the torture chambers of Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay.

Much is made of the failings of West Yorkshire police and the security services to properly investigate and/or assess Khan and Tanweer, particularly in the two years prior to 7th July 2005. However, there is an important question to be asked here:

How would Khan and Tanweer have known that they were not under investigation given the following facts:

29 March 2004: Momin Khawaja was arrested in Canada in the culmination of what was reported as a “a month long sting operation”

30 March 2004: Eight arrests were made of men who were known to Khan and Tanweer as part of Operation Crevice.

June 2004: news broke that the FBI had been holding Mohammed Junaid Babar in custody in New York since April 2004. It was reported that he was negotiating a plea bargain with the authorities.

Junaid Babar, a US citizen had being widely reported since November 2001, declaring support for the 9/11 attacks and announcing he was recruiting fighters to fight against US forces in Afghanistan:

As the TV camera rolled Mohammed Junaid Babar’s eyes shone indignantly behind nerdish glasses: “There is no negotiation with the Americans. I will kill every American that I see in Afghanistan, and every American I see in Pakistan.”15

Jon Gilbert, who conducted interviews with Junaid Babar, later mused:

“The conundrum still remains, though. Why did Babar talk to me so willingly in the first place? It’s a question that I’ve been asking myself for more than six years. Some suggest that he may have already been an FBI agent.“16

Despite making inflammatory and widely publicised pronouncements about being an Islamic warrior, despite seemingly declaring war on Americans, and despite his being a key facilitator in the alleged “terror training camps” in Pakistan (akin to the U.K equivalent of 'Q', Mohammed Quayyum Khan, also a part-time taxi driver), Junaid Babar appears to have been allowed to travel freely between Pakistan and the UK, as shown by the Operation Crevice timeline compiled by the Metropolitan Police17.

2001-2004

· Pakistani-born Mohammed Junaid Babar leaves his home in the USA, just days after 9/11 and travels to Pakistan to live

Spring 2003

· Mohammed Junaid Babar meets Omar Khyam and Waheed Mahmood in England.

January 2004

· Mohammed Junaid Babar travels to England and subsequently meets Omar Khyam, Waheed Mahmood, Jawad Akbar and Anthony Garcia

The results of a joint BBC Radio 4 File on 4 and Newsnight investigation also revealed that, “We understand that Siddique Khan was also seen with this man [Junaid Babar] in Leeds in 2003.”18

Hassan Butt, who first facilitated Junaid Babar's stay in Pakistan19, describes a meeting between Babar and Khan in Leeds, held after attending a barbecue to raise money for 'training camps' which is attended by a number of prolific propagandists and provocateurs for 'extremist' 'Islam'.

Butt reveals that after the jihadist barbecue he drove to Khan’s home near Leeds with another guest, Mohammed Junaid Babar, who would shortly become a supergrass. Babar’s testimony helped to secure the conviction last week of five members of the Crevice gang, who had planned to blow up — among other targets — the Bluewater shopping mall in Kent and the Ministry of Sound nightclub in London.

Although Babar describes the barbecue in his testimony, he does not refer to the drive north, nor to some of the guests named by Butt.

...

The host was a long-standing activist of Al-Muhajiroun, the group set up by Sheikh Omar Bakri in 1996

...

The guest list included men who were later to become notorious. Among them, claims Butt, was Mohammed Quayyum Khan, a part-time taxi driver from Luton who is alleged to have sent Mohammad Sidique Khan to the Malakand training camp on behalf of Al-Qaeda.

…

Butt, who had borrowed his brother’s navy blue Audi TT to get to the party from his home in Manchester, decided it was time to head back north. Babar asked to be dropped off near Leeds. ..

As the sun rose, Babar directed Butt to a terrace house in Batley, West Yorkshire, 15 minutes from the M1. A man in pyjamas came out to greet them. It was Mohammad Sidique Khan.

Butt had met Khan before. Babar had introduced them in 2002 at a gathering at Butt’s flat in Islamabad. Khan now recognised Butt and asked him if he wanted to come in.20

How likely is it that the joint intelligence services of the US and UK were not tracking Babar or Butt in the UK, particularly given Babar's high profile? Which of these two individuals was being tracked and to what extent? How was it possible that Junaid Babar was allowed to travel so freely between Pakistan and the UK?

FOI requests to the Foreign & Commonwealth Office submitted by J7 have been refused in respect of attempts by independent researchers to assess this information.

On Babar's second visit to Britain, he stayed with Fahad Hashmi in London and left behind some waterproof socks and a pair of night vision goggles. Junaid Babar went on to become the State's star-witness for the prosecution in the Crevice and Khawaja trials, and his testimony also resulted in a 15 year sentence for Syed Fahad Hashmi, who had previously been extradited to the US from the UK on the basis of the “glorified camping equipment”21 that Babar had left at Hashmi's residence. This was then reported as:

Hashmi, who moved to Britain from Queens in 2003, allegedly allowed his London flat to be used to store supplies and money that Babar was shipping to Abdul al-Hadi al-Iraqi, then head of al Qaeda operations in Afghanistan.22

Hashmi spent over 3 years under SAMS, extreme measures which included total isolation whilst facing a life sentence for this 'crime'.

Babar was also the source for the aluminium powder which featured in the Crevice trial.

The government would further prove that the defendant purchased and attempted to purchase the aluminum powder and ammonium nitrate that he knew would be used in explosive devices in the bombing plot in the United Kingdom, and that he did this throughout from December 2002 through March of 200423.

On 6th April 2004, Babar returned to the US but was not arrested or detained until 10th April 2004 when he was picked up by the FBI whilst on his way to a 'taxi school' in Queens, NY.

This is just a week after the Operative Crevice arrests; was his work now done? How did he manage to escape the 'no-fly list' to re-enter the US, given his well-publicised running and facilitating of 'terror training' in Pakistan?

Footnotes

9 J7: The July 7th Truth Campaign - The People's Independent Public Inquiry into 7/7 - http://www.julyseventh.co.uk/crevice/crevice-imran-khan-statement-for-defendants.html

13 THE ATTORNEY GENERAL OF CANADA v MOHAMMAD MOMIN KHAWAJA [2007 FC 490] Ottawa, Ontario, May 7, 2007 [PDF]- http://www.icj.org/IMG/Khawaja-Evidence.pdf

14 Canada's anti-terror legislation vs. Ottawa's Momin Khawaja - http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/observer/story.html?id=1bc4587f-748c-45be-8668-116fdb57619b

15 The supergrass I helped to create - Times Online - http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article1737411.ece

16 Ibid.

17 OPERATION CREVICE, Timeline and facts and figures - Metropolitan Police Service - http://nefafoundation.org/miscellaneous/FeaturedDocs/MPS_OpCreviceTimeline.pdf

18 BBC - Press Office - Newsnight/File on 4 investigation - http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2005/10_october/25/khan.shtml

19 Was CBS Duped by Radical Islamist? - http://www.aim.org/guest-column/was-cbs-duped-by-radical-islamist/

20 The jihadi house parties of hate - Times Online - http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1752338.ece

21 U.S. student pleads not guilty in terrorism case - World news - Terrorism - msnbc.com - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18923836/38180585

22 Focus: Is the Islamist group al-Muhajiroun waiting to strike again? | World news | The Observer - http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/may/06/terrorism.jamiedoward

23 http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/case_docs/853.pdf

To reiterate some of the questions that J7 posed to the Coroner that now require urgent answers if we are to understand what truly happened on 7 July 2005, how it happened, why it happened, and who made it happen:

How likely is it that the joint intelligence services of the US and UK were not tracking Babar or Butt in the UK, particularly given Babar's high profile?

Which of these two individuals was being tracked and to what extent?

How was it possible that Junaid Babar was allowed to travel so freely between Pakistan and the UK?

[babar entered the US] This is just a week after the Operative Crevice arrests; was his work now done?

How did he manage to escape the 'no-fly list' to re-enter the US, given his well-publicised running and facilitating of 'terror training' in Pakistan?

Ms Gallagher has raised some of the issues presented in the Guardian articles during this morning's Inquests hearings. She spoke on behalf of Mr Foulkes, father of David Foulkes, who was interviewed by the Guardian and quoted as saying "the terms of reference of the inquest are too narrow to deal with such questions and thinks that it should be suspended while they are re-evaluated":

.. He's asked me to make clear that his concern is not that scope is too narrow and, indeed, the scope ruling fully encompasses the issue of preventability and it's going to be explored next week, but what he does want to ensure is that the inquest has all relevant information and is in a position to fully explore this issue, including the potentially new information referred to in the article and the material that he's seen. Mr Foulkes is, of course, aware that there are PII materials which we haven't seen. It may be that this wasn't a new issue to the Inquest team and to you, my Lady. It may be that this is covered in bundle A and bundle B, which the legal teams and the families haven't seen. But Mr Foulkes' concern is this: he wishes to ensure that the Security Services give a clear statement to the inquest: (a) that they're not aware of any basis for the suggestion that Babar had been an informant for the authorities for any country prior to his detention in New York City in April 2004; and ( that they've provided to the Inquest team and the coroner all information which they have in respect of Babar and US/UK communications in respect of him, and Mr Foulkes' comment to the press --

LADY JUSTICE HALLETT: As relevant to these proceedings.

MS GALLAGHER: Precisely. Mr Foulkes' comment to the press was intended to suggest that, if the Inquest team didn't have those assurances, then suspension might be required, and it's an understandable and defensible comment which he made at the time in those circumstances.

Source: Hearing Transcripts 14 February 2011 morning page 50 lines 22 on

Posted by Bridget at 2/14/2011 12:04:00 PM 5 comments Email This BlogThis! Share to Twitter Share to Facebook Share to Google Buzz Links to this post

Labels: Fahad Hashmi, FBI, J7, Mohammed Junaid Babar, Operation Crevice, Shiv Malik, The Guardian

Sunday, February 13, 2011Colonel Mahoney, in Porton Down, with the flawed data

"There are known knowns; there are things we know we know.

We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know.

But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know."

- Donald Rumsfeld, former U.S. Secretary of State

We know there may exist unknown unknowns but, in the instances of the 7 July Inquests, should unknown unknowns form the basis of an open, just and transparent inquest process?

One of the most shocking revelations from these proceedings has been the fact that no internal post-mortems to identify the actual cause of death of the victims were carried out at the Resilience Mortuary set up in the grounds of the Honourable Artillery Company.

This shock was expressed by one of the first doctors on the scene from the BMA, Dr. Awani Choudhary, when giving evidence about his attempts to save the life of Gladys Wundowa:

Q. You've described your concerns about a possible neck injury. Is that what you meant by feeling that she was in immediate danger or did you mean something more by that?

A. More, I thought -- you see, I have felt her pulse, and by feeling the pulse you can have many, many information, and I thought that she was bleeding from somewhere, I have not seen the post-mortem report, but I thought that she was bleeding from somewhere, and I suspected that she is probably bleeding from either in her chest or abdomen, because her pulse was going very fast, and it was becoming weaker and weaker and, within 10 minutes, you could not feel her pulse near the wrist, but you could feel it just about near the elbow. So if the post-mortem says that she was not bleeding from anywhere, just had a spinal injury, I will be surprised.

Q. Can I ask you this: you've just mentioned bleeding. Do I take it from what you say that you mean internal bleeding?

A. Internal bleeding, yes.

Q. Since you ask about the post-mortem, can I simply inform you that, as with all the other casualties of the day, no internal post-mortem was conducted into Gladys Wundowa, so unfortunately, much as we would like the answers to the questions that you've asked, they don't --

A. I don't want to go through the medical too much. There are two types of shock a patient can have. What we call it, neurogenic, and the other, we call it hypovolemic. In the neurogenic pulse -- you see, the pulse will be pretty well, but the blood pressure will be low, you see, and in the hypovolemic shock, because the blood had been lost, it will be other way round, and I'm absolutely sure that she had had internal injury as well as a spinal injury, and I'm absolutely surprised that a post-mortem has not been done through and through.

Q. Well, Mr Choudhary, that isn't a matter to concern you.

A. Sorry.

Q. I was simply informing you so that we didn't chase any red herrings, but we don't need to concern ourselves about that matter.

Source: Hearing Transcripts 20 January 2011 morning Page 54 Lines 15 on

Before continuing, let us be perfectly clear about the exact role of a Coroner and the purpose of Inquests; it is to establish four things:

The identity of the deceased

When they died

Where they died

How they died

Back in April 2010 when the issues of the resumption and scope of the Inquests were being heard, Mr Patterson, counsel for some of the bereaved families, made it clear that the lack of internal post-mortems to establish cause of death had only just become known to them. The following lengthy section from the transcripts makes clear that this issue, along with the huge delay in identifying the deceased, was deemed by the families to be -- not unsurprisingly -- absolutely crucial to the scope of the Inquests:

As for this need for resumption, madam, the post-mortem examinations also arise as an area of concern for the families. In the case of Mrs Mozakka, for example, no post-mortem examination was held until 13 July, some six days after the bombs, and yes, of course the loss of life that was being addressed here was considerable, was unprecedented, but the question that arises is: could these post-mortems not have been carried out perhaps more quickly than they were? Are there lessons to be learnt? In particular, as to the post-mortems, we have now discovered from the scene reports that there were no internal examinations and, again, a question that arises is: why was the decision taken that there would be no internal examinations? Although the cause of death was clearly the explosions, the precise mechanism of death was not explored, and so that makes the question of survivability all the more difficult for us now and for the families when asking whether or not their loved one might have survived.

LADY JUSTICE HALLETT: If that decision was taken by a judicial officer, how do you say an inquest is going to explore that?

MR PATTERSON: It may be that your predecessor made that decision. I simply don't know. Doubtless, there were very good reasons, and it was carefully considered, but the fact remains that in looking now at survivability, we have to, for instance, in this case, assume that there were perhaps no internal injuries and that, therefore, sadly, this might be a case where this person was dealing with loss of blood and that Mrs Mozakka, for example, if she hadn't had any internal injuries that would have been insuperable, could have survived if the response had got to her quickly enough. We've read about tourniquets being applied and the like, and how often those very seriously injured did survive.

LADY JUSTICE HALLETT: I understand that argument. My question was how -- you said that one of the matters that you might wish to explore is why the decision was taken to have no internal investigation, and my question really was, how do you explore that aspect? It's one thing to explore what we do or don't know or what might have happened, given what we do or don't know, but it is a fact that no invasive post-mortems were held. If I am right in thinking that that decision was taken by a judicial officer, I just don't see how you end up exploring it unless you're going to ask to cross-examine him.

MR PATTERSON: I don't know what reasons were recorded at the time, whether they have been recorded somewhere.

LADY JUSTICE HALLETT: As far as whether or not -- as I see it, the aftermath can be divided into two categories. One is the response of the emergency services and whether or not that has impacted on people's chances of surviving the explosion. There's another aspect which you've just mentioned, which is: could the post-mortems have been carried out more quickly, are there lessons to be learned? Do you say -- which is almost a follow-on from the immediate aftermath, which is, what happens? Were the families notified quickly enough? Were the post-mortems carried out quickly enough? Could you help me on how you say those aspects impact or can be legitimately covered within the context of an inquest into the circumstances of the death as opposed to the circumstances of the investigation thereafter and the telling the families?

MR PATTERSON: I agree that there is a limit in the scope of the inquest, and the statute makes that clear, and the Coroners Rules make that clear, and clearly you have a discretion. All I can say in relation to those aftermath issues, where there is a legitimate argument to say that a line has to be drawn, and that they shouldn't be explored -- and, madam, we are realistic about this, and we know that, for instance, issues as to the way in which the family liaison officers communicated, it may be that some of those issues will be deemed to be beyond the scope of your inquest. We recognise that. It's a discretionary matter for you, and it may be that a clear, bright line can be drawn in relation to some of these issues by focusing on certain issues but not others, so that the recovery and the identification issues can be covered, the issues of the mortuary and the post-mortems can be covered, but that thereafter there may be a line that has to be drawn, and I recognise that and we are alive to that. All we would say is that this is a very good opportunity -- if you do resume the inquest, this is a very good opportunity to deal with those issues, if you take the view that they can be concisely and easily dealt with in the scope and in the course of your inquest.

LADY JUSTICE HALLETT: Even if I have a discretion, Mr Patterson, I'm bound to exercise that discretion in accordance with the law --

MR PATTERSON: Yes.

LADY JUSTICE HALLETT: -- and at some stage I would welcome greater assistance on -- you say that it might be a good idea to get these matters disposed of, but this is not a public inquiry; it is an inquest, if it's resumed.

MR PATTERSON: Absolutely, and we recognise that. Certainly, in the hours and days that followed the explosions, there were concerns that the families had as to the whereabouts of their loved ones and telephone calls that were made, enquiries that were made, didn't get the answers that it was hoped they would get and, for example, many of the families that I represent have concerns that, for instance, clear identification of the loved ones was found at the scene. In one case there was medication found with the name of the injured person, in another case there were identification cards found on the body. Yet, for many days, they were anxious and worried and telephoning hospitals and visiting hospitals enquiring into whether or not their loved one might still be alive.

Source: Pre- Inquest Proceedings 26 April 2010 morning page 73 lines 19 on

Despite the pleas of Patterson and the pleas of other counsels acting on behalf of the families, the issues of identification and recovery of the deceased were placed outside of the scope of the inquests. Instead, Mr Hill for the MPS offered to discuss with the bereaved how their loved ones were identified, but only outside of the official public inquest proceedings.

Why the Coroners in charge of the Resilience Mortuary, and who opened the Inquests into the 56 deaths, failed or actively chose not to carry out full autopsies to establish actual causes of death, which is after all the function of coroners, has not been revealed nor examined in any way. How can this be?

Whether some of the victims may have had injuries that with prompt hospital treatment were survivable - as perhaps in the case of Gladys Wundowa, who Choudhary pronounced dead in the courtyard of the BMA at 11.10, some 80 minutes after the explosion on the bus whilst University College Hospital was within walking distance - will likely never be known.

The setting up of a Resilience Mortuary was part of the 'Mass Fatality Plan' - drawn up after the events of 9/11 - and contracted to De Boer just the day before these events. The deaths of 56 people - 3 of whom had died in hospital - spread over 3 coroner's districts, hardly amounted to the significantly greater number of '500 or more fatalities' as envisaged and anticipated by the plan:

In drawing up the Mass Fatalities document, London Resilience needed to define clearly which organisation was responsible for which role. It was vital no gaps were left if a seamless plan to deal with 500 or more fatalities was to be developed. The author needed to source everything from body bags and transport to personnel and storage, but it was the need for large mortuary space that proved among the most problematic issues.

It soon became obvious existing mortuaries would not be able to cope with a large scale crisis. We needed blue-sky thinking. We decided temporary structures were the way forward. Quick to erect, modular, portable and highly flexible they became an obvious choice, and De Boer became an obvious supplier. Based in Northamptonshire in the UK, the company had already completed several contracts for the Metropolitan Police. De Boer had proved it could provide a relocatable building almost anywhere in London within a few hours’ notice. De Boer offered a managed solution, working with sub-contractors to create different environments required by different sections of a mortuary like temperature control, security, privacy, power, lighting, water and waste facilities. The company thoroughly understood our requirements and was able to meet exacting specifications.

PLANNING

The De Boer team spent months visiting permanent mortuaries and attending meetings with London Resilience to suggest a suitable structure and interior design to replicate the facilities they had seen. The unit needed to accommodate everything from post-mortem facilities to family areas and from body storage to canteen and offi ce facilities. When the bodies of British residents killed by the Asian Tsunami in 2004 were flown back to the UK, De Boer was commissioned through London Resilience to provide extra space at Fulham mortuary in south west London. It proved the plans in place could work and where they could be improved. Six months later on July 6, 2005, a document arrived at De Boer’s UK headquarters finalising what had been agreed for a future crisis response. Within 24 hours the plan was being realised and implemented with the creation of a temporary mortuary in the grounds of the Honourable Artillery Company near Moorgate Underground Station in central London.

Source: Crisis Response Journal (no longer on line)

Who took the decision to invoke the Mass Fatality Plan and construct a Resilience Mortuary at the cost of millions of pounds on 7th July? Why was the decision taken to implement a plan intended for upwards of 500 dead?

It is conceivable that the Mass Fatality Plan would omit full autopsies on the basis of time and personnel constraints in order to focus instead on identification - probably sensible when dealing with hundreds or thousands of deaths from a presumably known source (flooding, pandemic, etc), but was this necessary for 53 deaths? This important issue should certainly fall within the scope of the Inquests to examine.

Due to the absence of full post-mortems, the Inquests turned to the Ministry of Defence to construct models to show the probable fatal injuries and likely causes of death for those with no obviously fatal external injuries. This required another expensive process and a team was set up under Colonel Mahoney, defence professor of anaesthesia and critical care at the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine in Birmingham, whose previous experience included Camp Bastion in Afghanistan. Mahoney was tasked in August 2010 to lead an investigation into what happened to the 18 victims thought to have lived for some time after the explosions.

Q. The essence of your task, though, lies in recognising that it's possible to compute by reference to proximity to a given device the likely injuries that will result, all other things being equal?

A. It is, all other things being equal. Clearly, a real environment can be very complex, as we will be drawing out in a moment, but you can compute in terms of proximity to an explosion by understanding the size of the explosion, the characteristics of the explosive and the pressures and temperatures that that person was subject to, you can predict the likely injuries. Ideally, as we had with the military casualties, we would have an internal post-mortem to give us the degree of detail that we need to confirm those views, but even in the absence of that, you can make an informed judgment.

Q. That is why your view is to be properly expressed as a judgment, because you didn't have internal post-mortem material here which would have allowed you actually to see the condition of the lungs in each of the deceased?

A. That's absolutely correct. There are some people unfortunately, where you can look at the pictures and the environment and say, "I can feel very, very confident this person would not have survived and, in fact, would have likely died instantly", and there are other circumstances where we had to spend a lot more time reviewing the factors and trying to come to a balanced conclusion, and there there are no absolutes.

Q. It's important we understand, therefore, that you weren't asked to address the question of what was the cause of death in each case, because you were doing something different, which was to assess what was likely to have been the cause of death, because, of course, you had to use modelling and the other devices open to you because of the absence of internal post-mortem material?

A. That's right. Where we felt we had a clear cause of death, a particular injury that was demonstrated in the clinical documents, the external post-mortem report and that tied clearly with our views from the scene and the witness reports, we've highlighted that. In other circumstances, we've just had to come to a conclusion as to what was the likely cause of death, given the blast environment that we have calculated and assessed, but accepting the error bars that exist within that environment.

Source: Hearing Transcripts 30 January 2011 morning page 82 lines 14 on

The many caveats included in the final report of this modelling of the likely causes of death of the victims from a blast, included the crucially important, if slightly bewildering, caveat that there was no idea how the explosives allegedly used actually worked. We will ignore for now the not insignificant logistical issues regarding how it might be possible to allege that explosives were used whose characteristics were unknown:

MR KEITH: Colonel, may I now turn to the methodology that you adopted in this case by particular reference to the appendices and the structure of the individual reports? There are a number of methods, or there were a number of methods, open to you to assist you in reaching your overall view as to the likelihood of survivability, which was a likelihood based on the balance of probabilities. Is that right?

A. That's correct, yes.

Q. Firstly, there is, as we've discussed, past research on the effects of particular explosive devices and their construction?

A. Yes.

Q. Secondly, research on the likely effects on the body and its tissues and organs of the detonation of an explosive device?

A. Yes.

Q. In that regard, is it possible to compute through the use of highly advanced computers and modelling systems something known as blast loading, that is to say the effect on the body and its tissues of the detonation of a device?

A. Yes, you can. It has to be with caveats because we do -- as we did -- have to make assumptions, we had to make assumptions on the explosive output of the device.

Source: Hearing Transcript 31 January 2011 afternoon Page 1 Lines 2 on

The modelling of the blast zone and subsequent blast injuries used what was thought to be the equivalent quantity* of highly-explosive TNT to construct the models. TNT was chosen because the explosive output of the alleged home-made devices -- apparently based on hydrogen peroxide and an organic substance defined as 'piperine' -- was a totally unknown parameter and therefore could not be modelled.

So, assumptions are piled upon presumptions and houses of cards are built on shifting sands. These are the openly-stated unknown unknowns from which the bereaved families are meant to learn how they lost their loved ones. (* How the equivalent quantity of an unknown explosive could be reproduced with TNT when the very thing to which it is meant to be equivalent is declared to be unknown, is anyone's guess.)

The entirely unknown nature of the alleged explosives is not the only caveat contained in the final report produced by Colonel Mahoney's team. Others include:

Q. But your approach must, overall, be read subject to a number of caveats?

A. Yes.

Q. Firstly, as you mentioned, there was no invasive post-mortem in any case.

A. Yes.

Q. Secondly, the X-ray examination was limited, as you've just said, to fluoroscopy?

A. Yes.

Q. Thirdly, although you have photographic evidence, in some cases the photographs were difficult to interpret, for reasons I won't explore with you?

A. Yes.

Q. Fourthly, although there was some objective evidence as to the location of some of the deceased, there is a distinct lack of clarity as to where and how they were moved by the emergency responders?

A. Yes, and certainly in a crowded environment such as King's Cross there are -- some of the deceased, you can't be certain where they were within that dense crowd. [ibid p4:5 -25]

This point was driven home by Mr Patterson in questioning of the Colonel on the second day of his testimony:

I think it's clear from what you said yesterday, Colonel, that all these hundreds and thousands of hours that you and your team spent analysing these various issues, the work that you had to put in would have been a lot easier if you'd had the benefit of internal examinations. Is that right?

A. Yes, if we look at our military casualties, they have internal post-mortems and the majority of them have a post-mortem CT scan. So they have a complete, whole-body CT scan which looks for fragments, makes sure that there's no retained ordnance, but also means that you have a clear record of internal injuries.

Q. So, for example, if an expert like yourself or a family want to know about the internal injuries and whether, for instance, there was this leathering effect in the lungs that you spoke of yesterday, an internal examination might answer that, X-rays might answer that. Is that right?

A. We rely on a combination of both.

Q. We are denied both in this case, is that the position? We don't have either?

A. Well, the only information that we have evidence of is an external examination and the fluoroscopic examination which comments on fragments but does not comment on internal injury.

Source: Hearing Transcripts 1 February 2011 morning page 6 lines 10 on

Just how much more flawed data was input into this modelling process? After all, the modelling only became necessary because of the decision taken not to conduct full autopsies. One other extremely important factor to consider: the positions of the survivors on the trains -- no modelling was undertaken for bus victims -- which would be vital information to compute how injuries were dispersed within any blast zones. This lack of evidence required that the final report placed Phil Beer closer to the seat of the explosion than he was actually positioned on the Piccadilly Line train:

Now, to answer that categorically, what we would really need to see was the injury patterns in all the surrounding people and relate the injury patterns to that individual to those other injury patterns, which has not been part of our original instruction. [ibid p25:12]

A. If we accept our reasoning that Mr Beer was close to the seat of the explosion, based on the injuries that we've described and our initial reasoning that we think he had a high blast lung -- a high likelihood of blast lung because of the overpressure, that would push you more towards injury being -- survival being less likely. If you think, or there's evidence, that Mr Beer had a different chest injury, that would make survival potentially more likely. But on the evidence that we've got our -- my interpretation and the interpretation of my team would place him closer to the seat of the explosion than was indicated on the map. But to answer it -- to answer that appropriately, we'd really need to see an injury map of all the injuries around him or where the position you believe he may have been, and only then, by mapping all the injuries and the outcomes of people, can you say, yes or no, that's how the explosive products propagated. I can't be more precise than that. [ibid p26:2]

Ms Gallagher explores further in a testy session with the Colonel:

Q. Well, Colonel, it sounds as if we agree, because what I was going to put to you next simply was this: that despite the incredible and very wide expertise on the part of your team, the task that you were engaged in is necessarily an imprecise science, particularly given the imprecision and uncertainties in relation to the raw data with which you were working. So you could clearly, with precision, identify certain matters, but generally, you're working with a very wide number of variables, very complex, closed environments and where, as you've said yesterday, and again today, if you shift one of those variables, you can have a very different outcome?

A. No question at all.

Source: Hearing Transcripts 1 February, morning, page 43 lines 9 on

She then points to the caveats included in this report from Mr Hepper, the blast engineer on the team, on the extreme limitations of the modelling methodology absent of device and detonation details:

Q. So really what we're engaged in is a very nuanced discussion around your conclusions, which are based on this material and these variables, Colonel. In addition to the raw data received and relied upon, could I just also have on screen [iNQ10552-17]?

This is appendix A, so it's Mr Hepper, your colleague, Mr Hepper.

A. Yes.

Q. It's paragraph A4.3.6. This relates to the use of computational modelling to simulate the blast environment, and all I was going to say, Colonel, was that in itself carries its own caveats, which Mr Hepper refers to here. So here he refers to the work of Stuhmiller, and he says he "highlights that the possibility to validate these models is limited", and over the page, on page 18 [iNQ10552-18]: "... although the technology has progressed ... the confidence and fidelity of these models is still limited."

A. No question about it. [ibid p44:1]

Enlarge

INQ10552-18

None of the reports on blast lung explain the high incidence of electrocution experienced by so many passengers in the carriages, the subject of a future blog article. Nor do the reports cover how some survivors who were very close to the centre of the 'blast overpressure' survived without this injury (see passengers 56 to 60 in this bus diagram and Greg Shannon & William Walsh on the Aldgate train).

An expensive modelling process based on so many unknowns. Unknown explosives, unknown internal injuries, unknown survivor injuries, unknown X-rays. An expensive mortuary facility that failed to provide the basic information that the bereaved required, along with an expensive Inquest process that is failing to provide real answers to the key questions that it is the core function of an inquest to answer.

"If you want a more definitive answer on the injury patterns of closed-space bombings on a London train, then your task would be: look at all the deceased, look at all the living and look at all the injury patterns, and from that you'd have a more -- you'd have a greater fidelity of your model. But that wasn't the task."

- Colonel Peter Mahoney

Posted by Bridget at 2/13/2011 07:30:00 PM 8 comments Email This BlogThis! Share to Twitter Share to Facebook Share to Google Buzz Links to this post

Labels: 7/7, 7/7 Inquest, Colonel Peter Mahoney, De Boer, Honourable Artillery Company, London bombings, Mass Fatality Plan, Resilience Mortuary, TNT

Older Posts Home

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom) 7/7 Inquests Blog Archive

▼ 2011 (10)

▼ February (6)

MI5 taking the PISCES - Part 1

McDaid Who?

A cat amongst the [stool] pigeons - Mohammed Junai...

Colonel Mahoney, in Porton Down, with the flawed d...

Tavistock Square & the second controlled explosion...

SIMply wrong

► January (4)

The notable absence of Hasib Hussain

Corporate Spookdom, 'plausible deniability' at the...

Something is happening here & you don't know what ...

Tavistock Square and No. 30 Bus witnesses come for...

► 2010 (16)

► December (1)

Jermaine Lindsay, a circuit board and plastic bott...

► November (8)

The Identification of Mohammed Sidique Khan

7/7 Inquests: Fiat Brava Foxtrot Tango

The Conspirators and the "Conspiracy Phones"

7/7 Inquests: Open Justice or No Justice?

July 7th Inquests - 'Life Extinct'?

7/7 Inquests: The Alleged Identification of Shehza...

7/7 Inquests: Danny Biddle, the Rucksack on the La...

7/7 Inquests: The Disintegration of Shehzad Tanwe...

► October (7)

The Strange Account of Ross Mallinson

The Curious Case of the Jag That Parked in the Day...

Behind the Scenes of the Aldgate Explosion, at 11 ...

Don't Mention The Fifth (or Sixth?) Man

The Final Curtain - "CCTV rich" to "CCTV FAIL!"

A CCTV Fuss About Nothing?

7 July Inquests: It's A Conspiracy, Stupid!

Share J7!

Share | Latest Inquest Blog Comments

On Feb 23 Bridget commented on cat amongst stool pigeons mohammed: "Patrick O'Connor to corporate spook 'G' on 23 February:16 Can I ask you a final question about Babar? You17 will be aware recently…"

On Feb 23 The Antagonist commented on simply wrong: "Good question. What are the chances of the IPCC ever ruling in favour of justice for the population at large, and against the injustices perpetrated…"

On Feb 23 gyg3s commented on simply wrong: "Does anyone from this group (J7) have any intention of chasing up the Independent Police Complaints Commission (or similar) with regard to the…"

On Feb 20 numeral commented on mcdaid who: "@Anonymous 5.17Many things are remotely possible. It is possible that Mamida Begum, the biological mother of Khan, is not dead and is the current…"

On Feb 20 Anonymous commented on mcdaid who: "@numeral 1.05 So you're saying that MSK's biological mother died years ago, that the DNA reference sample was taken from the wrong Mamida…"

On Feb 20 Kier commented on mcdaid who: "Anonymous, your gleeful declaration "I've been waiting for J7 Truth to have their '9/11 no planes' moment" sheds a lot of light…"

On Feb 20 numeral commented on mcdaid who: "Anonymous-Feb18-9.25 said:"Will you please explain to the sheep how a piece of Tanweer's shinbone become lodged in a survivor's eye if…"

J7: Inquests Blog Feeds

Posts

Delivered by FeedBurner

Most read this week

Colonel Mahoney, in Porton Down, with the flawed data

"There are known knowns; there are things we know we know.We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some thing...

7/7 Inquests: The Disintegration of Shehzad Tanweer

As the Inquest approached the end of the third and final week of testimony and evidence into the Aldgate scene, as outlined in 'Factual Issu...

McDaid Who?

"McDaid who?" would be the majority of people's response if you mentioned the name McDaid in connection with the events in London on 7th Jul...

MI5 taking the PISCES - Part 1

Week 18 of the 7/7 Inquest proceedings from 21st to 24th February was scheduled to hear evidence regarding Preventability issues. The corpor...

A cat amongst the [stool] pigeons - Mohammed Junaid Babar

An article in today's Guardian asks some of the questions that J7 posed to the 7/7 Inquests when we sent our submission on Preventability to...

SIMply wrong

Back in October 2010, when DS Stuart first gave sworn testimony to the 7/7 Inquests (J7 analysis here) he told us that a phone belonging to ...

Tavistock Square & the second controlled explosion... of Richmal

New Zealander, Richmal Oates-Whitehead, died alone in her London flat, just weeks after the events in London on 7th July 2005. As a clini...

Jermaine Lindsay, a circuit board and plastic bottles

It appears that the King's Cross and Russell Square scene evidence will finish without examining any forensic or pathology evidence for the ...

The Identification of Mohammed Sidique Khan

Week 7 of the 7/7 Inquests drew to a close with the revelations of how Mohammad Sidique Khan was identified on Circle Line train 216 at Edgw...

Corporate Spookdom, 'plausible deniability' at the 7/7 Inquests

"The very grave danger is really as follows, entirely contrary to the interests of justice, that, as soon as any real probing questions are ...

[Steven Gaal]

8 comments SCENE 1

The pantomime season began early this year when a brand new stage production, called the “7/7 INQUEST”, opened at the Royal Courts of Justice. On the afternoon of the 14th of October, a rather plaintive cry of “what do we turn to next, Detective Inspector? “, was heard all around the auditorium, as the normally dependable and confident character-actor, Crown Barrister Hugo Keith, was left bereft of what to do, or say.

Both Hugo, and Detective Inspector Kindness, of Scotland Yard’s Counter-Terrorism Branch, had just spent a great deal of time tracing the progress of the innocent Hasib on CCTV footage through the streets outside King’s Cross Station. Finally, D.I. Kindness announced that they had now reached the last image of Hasib ever recorded. But the trouble was, the young man was no nearer to Tavistock Square – his alleged final destination – at the end of this sequence of digital images, than he was at the beginning. In fact, by walking along the Grays Inn Road he was moving further away than ever!

What could possibly save the opening scene of the pantomime, and put back the swagger into Hugo’s theatrical performance ? After all, he was supposed to be top-billing in this show. Well, the answer was – the good-old London Bus! With great aplomb, and the flourish of a policeman’s cape, the Detective Inspector conjured-up out of thin air the notion that Hasib had climbed aboard a bus, which had then whisked him away in the direction of Euston. The officer did not feel the need to produce a scrap of evidence for this. There was no CCTV image showing Hasib boarding the bus, or of him travelling inside the vehicle. There was a vague reference to witnesses, but he couldn’t name him/her/or them, and they didn’t make a statement to the police at the rehearsals, or attend the pantomime itself and give sworn testimony.

So, instead of being able to follow any more CCTV footage of Hasib himself, the audience were taken on a mystery bus-spotting tour. First, there was route 91 – which Hasib was supposed to have been aboard. There there was mention of a 205 bus, and a 253. Route 168 then took a bow, as did the 73 and the 59. Eventually, a number 30 came into view, and this particular bus suddenly exploded as it entered Tavistock Square.

The theatre audience gasped in horror. It was clear from the extensive damage done to the vehicle that some kind of high-powered explosive device had been planted on the top deck of the bus. But before anyone could collect their thoughts, a pantomime policeman entered from stage right and announced that the 18 year-old Hasib had been a ‘suicide bomber’, and had carried out this attack by means of a home-made concoction that had been brewed in a bath-tub in Leeds!

No CCTV image was ever shown of Hasib on the number 30 bus, and no credible eye-witness came forward to claim they saw him boarding at Euston. Admittedly, there was a brief cameo appearance by an implausible character with a squeaky Scottish accent who said he saw a young man fiddling with a rucksack on board the bus, but everytime he opened his mouth he gave a different account of what he had seen. The audience soon grew tired of his irritating voice, as well as his crackpot performance, and shouted “Get Him Off” – which the pantomime director duly did ( but only for this same character to appear much later, playing the part of a stooge in a very dubious BBC production ).

SCENE 2

By now the theatre audience were becoming quite restless and angry. The poorly constructed plot had too many inconsistencies, and the narrative didn’t seem to make much sense.

One member of the audience shouted “why would an 18 year-old lad from Yorkshire want to kill himself with a bomb on a London bus anyway? Surely if he was unhappy with the public transport services in West Yorkshire, he would have blown himself up on a bus in Leeds or Bradford!”

Someone else added, “Why did he not detonate the device on the 91 bus – which was the first vehicle he travelled on.”

A third objector claimed that he “could see no link at all between Hasib at Kings Cross, and the bus bombing in Tavistock Square.”

Realising that all was not well, the Production Manager rushed out on to the stage and tried to reassure the audience that the narrative was both realistic and robust.

But they were having none of it. “If Hasib is on a suicide mission, then why is he aimlessly wandering around King’s Cross, and not purposefully heading straight towards his destination?” yelled one man sitting in the upper circle. “Could it be that Hasib is under the control of evil masters who have told him to wait outside the station because his role in their dastardly plan will not commence for another hour?”

Someone else chimed in – “and if this is the case, then obviously Hasib is just filling time, and does not really know what to do with himself over this period. So he just wanders around the King’s Cross area, phoning his friends on his mobile phone, visiting MacDonald’s for a burger, and then going into W.H. Smiths for a purchase. His behaviour is quite innocent, and not at all suspicious.”

“Ah!” exclaimed the Production Manager, “but in W.H Smiths he buys a 9-volt battery; is that not very sinister? He is clearly buying this battery for a detonator that lies hidden, along with the bomb, inside the rucksack that he is carrying.”

One lady in the front row piped-up, “But my 18 year-old son looked up on the internet, and there it told him that 9-volt batteries are very useful power units for transistor radios, digital cameras, electrical toys, model cars and trucks, guitar effects and digital clocks. So he buys them regularly for all his electronic devices. I have no doubt that the young Hasib, who was a similar age, was doing the same thing – buying a new battery for some electrical gadget that he was going to use when he got back home to Leeds later that day.”

“Be silent, madam”, commanded the now-exasperated Production Manager, “everyone in the civilised world of spies, intelligence agents, secret police, informers, government narks, hit-squads and assassins knows full well what a 9-volt battery is used for.”

But another female voice rang out to say ” If Hasib had really been a suicide bomber, then it stands to reason that he would have thoroughly checked the battery before setting out from Leeds that morning. It beggars belief to suggest that only when he arrived at Kings Cross did he realise that the battery was faulty, and that he would have to pop in to W.H. Smiths to buy a replacement!”

SCENE 3

There was a further interjection, this time by a 10 year-old boy, who wondered aloud whether all the ice in the rucksack – which was alleged to have been used to cool the bomb – would not have completely melted by the time Hasib reached Kings Cross. His Dad, sitting next to him agreed, adding, “Let’s face the facts here; it was July – the height of summer, and I read somewhere in the Pantomime’s programme that Hasib and his friends had set out on their journey just before four o’clock that morning. Well, the bomb detonated some time after 9.45 – that’s nearly six hours after the ice had been removed from a freezer. In that time the rucksack and its contents had travelled in a small Nissan Micra car all the way down the motorway to Luton. It had then been carried by Hasib on a crowded rush-hour train to Kings Cross, and from there down into the Underground Station and back out again. The rucksack had then spent nearly an hour being lugged around the streets and on to two buses. Surely the ice would have completely melted long before Tavistock Square, with the rucksack swimming in water. Any explosive mixture would by then have turned to sludge.”

“Why can’t you people just accept the story-line that you’ve been given?” growled the angry Production Manager.

But his response only antagonised the audience further. Several people started shouting out: “What about the bereaved families, and those who were badly injured, or who had lost limbs in the explosion? And there are many others who have suffered psychological trauma and are even now trying to rebuild their shattered lives. Are they going to get true justice? It seems they have to remain silent in the wings, while a bunch of ham-actors and perjurers are allowed to parade themselves across the stage.”

The Production Manager was now incandescent with rage. “This pantomime has been staged purposely for the benefit of the bereaved and injured”, he spluttered. “They’ve had their paltry compensation, and they’ve even had a phoney memorial built for them in Hyde Park. Now we are putting on this brilliant production to show the world that we care” – ( although, to be honest, it’s also a handy method of getting the authorities off the hook, and drawing a line under the whole ghastly business ).

He could stand it no longer, “You are all conspiracy theorists”, barked the Production Manager.

“Oh No We’re Not !” responded the audience.

“Oh Yes You Are !” he yelled back.

SCENE 4

A stagehand then rushed forward from behind the scenes to whisper in his ear. “Sir, we are on the verge of a crisis here, shouldn’t we return to the Pantomime?” “Yes, precisely”, muttered the defeated Production Manager. And upon uttering this magic word, the trapdoor in the floor of the stage suddenly flew open, and a terrifying figure arose enveloped in billowing green smoke. This was the arrival of the pantomime villain – Peter ‘Power of Darkness’.

“This morning I was holding an exercise for an organisation with a thousand employees” he began. “Obviously the vast majority had proper work to do, but I did persuade about eight of them to join me in a little office near the basement. After a while the Supervisor came along, clapped his hands, and said, get a move on you lot, chop-chop, this exercise is going on far too long. So we immediately switched from slow time thinking, to quick time doing, and got our bureau numbers – a logical thing to do. After-all there are more Jewish businesses in Cricklewood, than there are American banks in the City of London, so it stands to reason….

The audience were incensed by this flow of gibberish and started booing and hissing. Almost at once Peter ‘Power of Darkness’ started to descend through the trapdoor, shouting “I’ve still got the hairs on the back of my neck standing upright”. And with that he disappeared for ever – except for occasional appearances on the BBC.

FINAL SCENE

That night a deeply-troubled Hugo left the brightly lit Royal Courts of Justice, and trudged wearily homeward through the dark, snow-covered streets of London to his dank, lonely garret. It was getting near to Christmas and he fretted that the pantomime would not last the whole season. The problem was, he thought to himself, the story-line was so poorly scripted. No adult – and certainly no child -would accept such an unbelievable narrative. Fair enough, all those actors who had behaved honourably, or bravely, on July 7th had been warmly applauded by the audience, but the rest of the cast – including himself – had been blown a large raspberry. Hugo searched for adequate words to describe the pantomime. “What was it the former prime-minister, Tony Blair, had said – a Ludicrous Diversion?” Yes, that was it – a ludicrous diversion.

When he finally reached his luxury penthouse in fashionable Mayfair, Hugo switched on the TV and picked up some of the morning newspapers. And to his astonishment, all the media were heaping praise on the pantomime, and giving it high marks for its quality, credibility, and – yes – durabilty. The BBC, of course, was gushing like an over-excited schoolgirl, while even an editorial in the Guardian ‘waxed lyrical’ about the performance of the fairy-godmother – Lady Justice Hallet.

Hugo’s face started beaming with joy, as he realised that the pantomime would run and run all the way through to the end of March. And then – in April maybe – a large cheque would drop through the gold-plated letterbox of his Georgian, French mahogany, front-door. He now sighed with relief, as he pulled on his Santa hat, poured himself a sherry, grabbed a couple of minced-pies, and began to sing the words of his favourite Christmas Carol -”God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, Let Nothing You Dismay ……

Contributed by Graeme - and thank you, Sir!

Uncategorized 7/7 Inquest, Hasib Hussain CommentsLeave a comment Trackback

Written by graeme about 1 month ago.

Reply So, the pantomime continues with the arrival of more participants – even the resurrection of dear old ’squeaky’ Richard Jones. He has obviously been told by his superiors to attend the Inquest, in order to deliberately discredit his own accounts of July 7. Now that it has been well-and-truly established that the bomb exploded on the top-deck of the number 30 bus, his many versions of what happened are no longer needed, and so, by sticking closely to the crackpot account that he initially gave to the media, his testimony can be safely discarded by the Inquest – along with grateful thanks, and lots of love, from Hugo The Barrister.

Turning to more serious things; we now – at last – have sworn evidence from eye-witnesses on both buses that morning;- the 91, and the 30. (I’ll deal with the latter in a subsequent post, but first let us deal with the number 91 bus.)

Well, there is surprisingly good quality testimony from ANETA DYBEK-ECHTERMEYER, who describes a man fitting the appearance of Hasib Hussein on the lower deck of the vehicle. She says he boarded the bus in the Grays Inn Road at Kings Cross, and then left it – as all the passengers had to – at Euston. What makes her evidence so credible, is not just her own account, but that she is backed-up by another passenger – PAUL REKRET – who also saw this man on board. While he cannot remember when the man got on the bus, his evidence does tally very well with that of Aneta Dybek-Echtermeyer.

Apparently, both their attentions were aroused by a nervous, agitated-looking man, who was carrying a heavy rucksack. He seemed lost, or pre-occupied, and was oblivious to his immediate surroundings because he kept bumping his rucksack into other passengers. Aneta Dybek-Echtermeyer stated that his face was sweating horribly, and both recalled that one young woman even tapped him on the shoulder, and politely asked the man to be more considerate of other passengers – but he said nothing in response.

Now, this is only the second time in the entire pantomime that there has been any corroboration of evidence. In fact we have to go right back to Woodall Services on the M1 motorway to find any statement or testimony that is confirmed by another witness or some additional information ( i.e.;- the motorway service manager’s account being verified by clear, timed and dated, CCTV images ). Every other witness statement has remained uncorroborated up-until-now. Therefore, it is highly likely – if not absolutely certain – that these two witnesses were indeed looking at Hasib Hussein on board the number 91 bus that morning.

However, what they are describing is not a suicide bomber who is travelling willingly and serenely to some kind of celestial paradise, but a hot, tired, confused, and thoroughly fed-up young man who doesn’t know where he is going.

You see, Hasib has been awake since at least 3 o’clock that morning, and has travelled for nearly three hours in a cramped Nissan Micra all the way down from Leeds to London. There, he has been given a ‘pep-talk’ by a patronising geezer in a posh suit, who drives a Jaguar; and that guy has told him that he is about to take part in a very important secret exercise. He must not communicate with any member of the public while on the exercise, and he must follow the instructions of his ‘handlers’ down to the letter. He is then given a heavy rucksack to carry, and is told that it contains a fake bomb and a detonator.

Along with his friends, he stands on a crowded rush-hour train down to Kings Cross, and is then led by his handlers into the underground station. But upon arriving there he is immediately separated from his friends, and is curtly told to go and wait outside the station because he is not needed for the exercise at that stage. Hasib, quite naturally, ‘has the hump’, but he does as he is told, leaves the station, and starts mooching around the nearby streets.

Kings Cross is not a very pleasant place to hang around during the rush-hour – especially on a warm July morning. The place is swarming with crowds, and the traffic noise and exhaust fumes are ubiquitous. He is totally overdressed for the hot city streets, and he dosen’t know where to go, or what his friends are doing. The heavy rucksack is a damned nuisance, and as the time ticks on he is becoming more-and-more tired and sweaty. The novelty of taking part in the exercise is rapidly dissipating, but he has to continue, mainly out of loyalty to his friends, but also because he is being paid. So there is nothing he can do except continue wandering around the streets and phoning his friends on his mobile phone.

Eventually he drops the rucksack on the floor and decides to look inside ( we have CCTV footage of him rifling through the contents, just by the entrance to the mainline station.) To his disgust, instead of any equipment that looks vaguely electrical – like switches, cables, fuse-wires, timing devices etc., the rucksack contains a couple of bricks, two or three plastic bags full of sand, a rusty can of golden syrup, two jars of mouldy peanut butter, and a pile of old socks and vests that came out of a laundry basket belonging to a British Intelligence Agent…..

This discovery does nothing to lighten Hasib’s already sour mood. He feels tricked by his handlers into lugging a rucksack full of rubbish around the streets of London. So he decides not to hang around outside the station any more, but ‘to do his own thing’ by going into W.H. Smiths and purchasing a battery for himself, and then visiting Mac Donalds where he can sit down and enjoy a burger and a milk-shake.

Eventually his handlers meet up with him on the Grays Inn Road, and he thinks that his ordeal is over and will now be rejoining his mates. But to his dismay these handlers put him on board a 91 bus and send him along to Euston, where he is told that he will be met by another couple of guys who will tell him what to do next. Hasib Hussein – just 18 years old – is now near the end of his tether. He is agitated and confused, and probably more than a little ‘on edge’, as to where he is going, and where and when he will meet up with his friends.

So, what the two eye-witnesses are clearly witnessing on the 91 bus is a young man anxiously looking out the windows, petulantly displaying his irritation and contempt by deliberately swaying and bumping his phoney rucksack into the other bus passengers. Even though he has lost faith in the exercise, he still doggedly presses on, because he does not respond to the young woman who taps him on the shoulder. This indicates that he is still obeying the instructions that he was given back at Luton, i.e.;- that he must not communicate with any members of the public.

Written by NK about 1 month ago.

Reply Those two witnesses both described ‘HH’ as wearing dark glasses, on the 91 bus, and there are no pics of him wearing glasses at all. They also alluded to the 19 rather than 91 bus. Anita Dybeck: ‘Yes, he did have the glasses, like small — like, looking a bit like techno kind of style, reflecting glasses as well, black reflecting glasses.’ (12th Jan para 62); Rekret, (12th pm para 4): ‘he did have sunglasses. I noted that I couldn’t recall whether he was wearing the sunglasses or whether they were on his head.’

Written by graeme about 1 month ago.

Reply The afternoon session on the 14th October (Page 17)

D.I. Kindness and Hugo are viewing the CCTV footage of Hasib Hussein at Kings Cross, and apparently he puts on a pair of sunglasses after leaving Mac Donalds.

I seem to recall that I have seen some images of Hasib wearing sunglasses – I’m sure that it was shown on TV. Maybe some of you out there can verify if such footage exists.

From their testimony the two eye-witnesses on the bus clearly state the 91. The number 19 does not call at Caledonian Road, nor Kings Cross.

I think we might have to conclude that Hasib Hussein was on that bus – but we can only speculate why the Met. have been so reluctant to release any CCTV images.

Written by Andrew S. MacGregor about 1 month ago.

Reply ‘I like Graeme. Graeme is a thinker, and he has intelligence, with a bit of sarcastic wit, that whets his style of writing.

I have based my belief that Hasib Hussain did not ride on the 91 bus on the absolute failure of many CCTV cameras, those cameras being on buses 91 and 30, as well as at Euston Station, and we were told that by Det.Insp. I. Kindness and Hugo Keith QC. I will retain this view.

So now, to cover that area of uncertainty, Hugo Keith has produced two witnesses who saw Hasib Hussain on bus 91. Well that may be the truth, or it may still be lies, we will need more information to work that out, but it is not that important in the overall scheme of things.

I do though like the twist of the sunglasses. Apparently nearly all of the CCTV scenes show Hasib Hussain without sunglasses, and yet the two witnesses on bus 91 say sunglasses, and then Graeme says ‘look at the last frames as Hasib Hussain leaves McDonalds. I’d say that Graeme would be spot on in this argument.

However, if Graeme’s theory is correct, in that somebody did get Hasib Hussain onto the Bus 91, then Graeme’s belief that Hasib Hussain would be tired, irritable and a bit angry is not quite correct. Hasib Hussain would still be of the belief that everything was right and he had just been helped to make his part of the play work out and for that he would be thankful, not angry.

It was Lisa French’s statement concerning her sighting of Hasib Hussain on Bus 30, in that he was bumping into people including a little old lady, that people would start thinking that Hasib Hussain was starting to show some irritability, that is until you sight the bus-driver’s statement where he says that he had about 100 people on board that he had picked up at Euston Station, and then stopped and let about forty people off.

If Bus 30 was so overcrowded, and Hasib Hussain was on that bus, and standing on the lower floor, then there is every possibility that he would be bumping other people, especially whenever the bus lurched. In fact any person wearing a rucksack would be accidentally bumping into people. But, if Hasib Hussain was on the bus the CCTV camera would have shown him, and please do not use the excuse the cameras didn’t work. That lie has been around longer than Princess Di’s murder in Paris.

However, once you view the photograph of the 30 Bus shortly after the explosion and you see two young men on the top deck, both wearing rucksacks, then you realise that Lisa French could have mistaken either one of these two for Hasib Hussain. Memory is a fickle creature and often changes with time, which is why police statements are required to be taken as soon as possible.

Again, I would compare the driver’s statement with those statements make by Richard Jones immediately after the event, and in the days following when the media made more of Richard Jones.

And then I’d go back to Terence Mutasa, the nurse from the University College Hospital who said, “I treated two girls in their 20′s who were involved in the bus bomb. They were saying some guy came in and sat down and that he exploded. The girls received minor injuries and were in shock and distressed. They said the guy just sat down and the explosion happened. They thought it was a suicide bomber.”

So, who were these two girls and where were they seated to have seen ‘this guy’ sit down on a seat and then ‘explode’?

And again consider that ‘this guy’ came and sat down and then exploded just as the bus had reached an area predicted by Efraim Halevi, the former head of Mossad.

You see, these two girls have a vivid recollection of what had happened, and had they been properly interviewed by police, they would be able to describe the ‘guy’ and what he was wearing, and especially if he had been carrying a large rucksack’

One would imagine that these two girls would have been ‘star’ witnesses.’

Written by NK about 3 weeks ago.

Reply There is a suggestion here http://7julyinquests.independent.gov.uk/hearing_transcripts/01022011pm.htm

that Germain Lindsay did twig to what was going on, from what he saw at King’s Cross, shortly before the bombs went off.

Written by graeme about 1 month ago.

Reply Thanks Andrew, for your comments. Yes, you’re right – it doesn’t matter very much now whether Hasib Hussein was on the number 91 bus or not. Nick has, in his post entitled “Lisa French And The Tavistock Square Blast’, written a clear account summarising the events on the number 30 bus, including the testimony of the key eye-witnesses aboard. It is quite evident that Hasib was not on that vehicle – and the only witness who suggested that he might have been, is Lisa French herself.

I actually read her testimony before reading Nick’s post, so I was unaware at that stage of her harrowing post-traumatic condition. But even while reading this poor lady’s account, it felt as though she was someone desperately trying to prove to herself, rather than the inquest, that she was following the footsteps of a ’suicide bomber’ who had changed her life for ever.

So, we are now left with the question of what happened to Hasib Hussein and the two others – Shezhad Tanweer and Jermaine Lindsey. In his excellent documentary film ‘7/7 RIPPLE EFFECT’, Muad’Dib speculates that the four ( in fact, just 3 ) men made their way to Canary Wharf, where they attempted to contact media organisations such as Reuters. He claims that they had discovered they were being used as dupes in a real terror attack, and had fled there to tell their story before the perpetrators closed in and silenced them.

This maybe true, but there are drawbacks to such a scenario;-

1) The perpertrators could not possibly allow the men to be seen alive after the explosions had taken place. It would be essential to keep them hidden, under close guard.

2) If the young men had found out the truth and made a sudden escape from their “handlers”, then the latter would quickly have hunted them down long before they ever reached Canary Wharf.

3) The background of these guys suggests that they really wouldn’t have had much of a clue of how to go about contacting the national newspapers, radio or TV. They may have heard of Canary Wharf, but they would not have known what was there – or even how to get there. Perhaps if their leader, Mohammad Siddique Khan, had been present that day, then he would have been able to “think on his feet” in an emergency, and have considered such a plan of action. But the three others were too young and inexperienced to have acted in this way.

4) These three would have just paniced, dumped their rucksacks, and dashed back into the Thameslink Station – hoping to catch a train back to Luton.

My own theory is this;- that they remained unaware of the truth right through to the end. They had been told that they had an important role in the “exercise” , and so the idea that they were being “set up” never entered their heads – even when things started to go wrong due to their late arrival in London that morning.

I reckon that it was never the intention of the perpetrators to place Hasib Hussein on the number 30 bus – because they couldn’t guarantee that he would find an available seat on the upper deck, towards the rear, where the explosion would take place. ( Supposing he could only find a seat near the front, or had to stand downstairs near the doors. He would then have survived the blast, and the whole plot would have unravelled.) Similarly with the others on the tube trains – the perpetrators could not take the risk of the men surviving. So they, too, were never going to be put on board the trains ( hence, the absence of CCTV images ).

But of course they still had the problem of disposing of the young men. My contention is that a pair of vans were already waiting for them in the streets around Kings Cross. These could then transport the men secretly – according to the original plan – out to Canary Wharf. The three guys would not be alarmed by this, because they had already been told earlier, back in the car park at Luton Station, that once the exercise was over they would conveyed in vans to an office, well away from Kings Cross, where everyone would be de-briefed, and a summary of the event compiled for an official report.

In reality, a “killing zone” had been prepared, probably in an underground car park at Canary Wharf. The first van would arrive carrying Tanweer and Lindsey. They would step out of the back doors of the vehicle, and would be immediately gunned-down by marksmen – without them ever knowing a thing. The second van would then arrive, but obviously it could not drive into the area where the bodies and blood were visible. So it halted near the HSBC Tower, and Hasib Hussein left the vehicle there instead. He, too, was summarily executed – once again, never realising the awful truth.

I’m sorry if this sounds brutal and unpleasant – but how else were these guys despatched ?

Written by NK about 3 weeks ago.

Reply There is a suggestion here http://terroronthetube.co.uk/latest-77-articles-3/germaine-lindsey-at-king%e2%80%99s-cross/ that Germin Lindsey did twig to what was happening, at King’s Cross, shortly before the bombs went off.

Written by graeme about 3 weeks ago.

Reply Yes, I read your post regarding Jermaine Lindsey at Kings Cross. I did leave a comment a few weeks back. But you could well be right. Lindsey had certainly escaped the clutches of his “handlers” at that moment, and was definitely acting “off-message” . According to Mr Patel he was most insistant about contacting the Duty Manager asap. Maybe Lindsey did feel uneasy about the situation on the Picadilly Line, because things were obviously not going to the plan that they had been told about in advance.

But whether he realised the full danger to himself at that time – we’ll never know. Unfortunately, Mr Patel gives such a wide time-frame of between 8.15 and 8.45 for when he spoke to Lindsey, but the bombs did not detonate until 8.49, and so at that stage Lindsey would have been unaware of any explosions, deaths or injuries.

[Len Colby]

I doubt many people will sludge through this, can you summarize the most pertinent points? 7/& has already been discussed here. Why did this necessitate 2 threads?