British officials pored over evidence including 2 500 closed-circuit television tapes as they investigated the London terrorist attacks. In Spain, a government official cast doubt on British press reports that a key suspect was the mastermind of last year’s Madrid railways bombings.
As Prime Minister Tony Blair told Parliament the attacks were probably carried out by Islamist extremists, and the death toll rose to at least 52, London’s metropolitan police chief, Ian Blair, urged the public to give officials the time they need to investigate.
”This is the biggest crime scene in English history, and we’ve got to get this right,” Blair said Monday at a news conference outside Kings Cross train and subway station, where all three underground railway trains passed through shortly before they were struck Thursday.
The doubledecker bus that was bombed shortly after, exploded on a nearby street.
”We will be absolutely implacable in our determination to find the people responsible for this, and we know we have the support of Londoners and people around the world in attempting to solve this terrible crime,” said Blair.
He said the investigation would take in the 2 000 phone calls to an anti-terrorist hot line, 115 000 calls to police, and complex forensic evidence from the scenes of the subway and bus attacks, where many of the victims were blown apart.
At the same time, Britain was receiving help from many of its allies.
Over the weekend, intelligence officials and detectives from about two dozen countries — including Spanish investigators who worked on the Madrid bombing case — met with British officials to discuss leads in last week’s terrorist attacks.
”We told them what the state of the investigation was” during the private meeting on Saturday at Scotland Yard, which included British police and MI5, Britain’s domestic intelligence service, a metropolitan police spokesperson said on Monday.
Nieves Gutierrez of the Spanish Embassy in London said the Spanish team would draw on its experience investigating the railway bombings that killed 191 people in March 2004.
Those attacks had some similarities to the London ones. Public transportation was the target in both cases during well-coordinated morning-rush-hour attacks, and police think the London bombers may have left their explosives in small bags or backpacks, as the Madrid attackers did.
However, a senior Spanish Interior Ministry official played down British press reports that Syrian Mustafa Setmarian Nasar — suspected of being al-Qaeda’s Europe operations chief and the alleged mastermind of the Madrid attack — has emerged as a key suspect in the London bombings.
”The British authorities have not passed that on to us,” said Antonio Camacho, responsible for Spain’s police forces, including the one that specialises in Islamic terror cases.
”For the time being, this is not something that is even minimally proven,” Camacho said in Madrid.
Andy Trotter, assistant chief constable of British transport police, also criticised the quick media comparisons between the London and Madrid attacks, telling reporters at King’s Cross station that observers could just as easily draw similarities between terrorist attacks in Bali, Indonesia, and Istanbul, Turkey.
”We are looking at all possibilities,” said Trotter, who refused to discuss specific leads.
Christophe Chaboud, head of France’s Coordination Anti-Terrorist Unit, who visited London to confer with British anti-terrorism officials, said the explosives used weren’t heavy ”but they were powerful”.
”The nature of the explosives appears to be military, which is very worrisome,” Chaboud was quoted as telling Le Monde newspaper on Monday. ”We’re more used to [terror] cells making homemade explosives from chemical substances,” he added.
Police said that each of the four London bombs contained less than 4,5kg of high explosives, about half the weight of the Madrid explosives.
Military-type explosives could be procured on the black market or with the help of someone in the military, Chaboud said.
A Moroccan man who has been accused of being a suspect in the London bombings was quoted by the Guardian newspaper on Monday as saying he had nothing to do with Thursday’s attacks.
Mohammed el Guerbouzi (48) moved to Britain in 1974. He was convicted there in Morocco in absentia of involvement in the 2003 Casablanca bombing that killed 45 people.
He was quoted by Guardian as criticising newspapers that linked him to the London and Madrid attacks, and said he was only convicted in Morocco because of his vocal opposition to the regime there.
”Over 30 years I have lived in Britain I have never been involved in violence or crime,” he said.
Magnus Ranstorp, director of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at St Andrews University in Scotland, said the challenge faced by British investigators is likely to be too much information, not too little.
”You can’t just haul in people. That would be counterproductive. You just have to follow the forensic trail and weed through all the different information,” Ranstorp said in an interview.
While investigators conduct the slow process of analysing physical evidence, they are sure to be keeping known militants and other suspects under surveillance and looking for intelligence clues they may have missed, he said.
Ranstorp predicted results within two to three weeks and said CCTV footage was among the avenues likely to produce concrete information.
Accelerated timetable
Blair’s government is prepared to speed passage of new anti-terror laws to prevent a repeat of last week’s deadly bus and train bombings in London, but an independent reviewer said on Tuesday that an overhaul is not needed immediately.
Ministers are considering creating new criminal offences, including planning an act of terrorism, with a mind to new legislation early next year.
Blair told the House of Commons on Monday he would accelerate that timetable if police and intelligence services called for new powers.
”If as the fuller picture about these incidents emerges and the investigation proceeds it becomes clear that there are powers which the police and intelligence agencies need immediately to combat terrorism, it is plainly sensible to reserve the right to return to Parliament with an accelerated timetable,” Blair said, briefing lawmakers on the July 7 bombings that left at least 52 people dead.
Lord Carlile, appointed by the government to oversee the working of counterterrorism legislation, said on Tuesday there was no immediate need to change the law, but said Blair was right to keep a flexible timetable.
He backed plans for a new law outlawing acts preparatory to, or connected with, terrorism.
”I believe such a law would be useful,” Carlile told British Broadcasting Corporation radio. ”It would enable the police and other control authorities to step in and charge people connected with terrorism at a very early stage.”
Ministers have long argued that it’s difficult to convict terror suspects since intelligence gathered by Britain’s spy agencies is too sensitive to reveal in court. Blair’s government has significantly tightened anti-terror laws since it swept to power in 1997.
The Terrorism Act 2000 outlaws more than 20 radical groups including al-Qaeda, and reaches beyond Britain’s borders to allow for prosecution of those involved in activities abroad. Speaking at meetings of a banned group or even wearing a T-shirt promoting an outlawed organisation is forbidden.
Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, the government passed sweeping emergency legislation allowing the detention of foreign terror suspects indefinitely without trial. In December, Britain’s highest court declared the law illegal and a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights.
In response, the Parliament passed the Prevention of Terrorism Act in March, allowing authorities to place terror suspects under house arrest and impose travel bans without trial. The law also allows the government to ban terror suspects from meeting certain people or restrict their access to the internet or telephone.
Under current plans, new legislation will be introduced early next year, including new offenses of committing acts preparatory to terrorism and associating with members of a banned terrorist organisation.
Plans for Britain’s first national identity card since World War II are also currently before Parliament — a measure Blair argues is vital in the fight against terrorism. – Sapa-AP