London bombings inquest clears UK agencies

There is no evidence that the security services could have prevented the 2005 London bombings, a coroner found on Friday while warning that changes were necessary to help prevent further such atrocities. The exhaustive inquests examining the deaths of the 52 victims of the Al-Qaeda-inspired July 7, 2005 suicide attacks on three underground trains and a bus found they were all unlawfully killed. The coroner, judge Heather Hallett, said the evidence "does not justify the conclusion that any failings of any organisation or individual caused or contributed to the deaths". The inquest heard that the MI5 domestic intelligence agency and the police had several opportunities to identify one of the four suicide bombers as a jihadist who had attended training camps in Pakistan. But Hallett said: "There is simply no evidence at all, that the Security Service knew of, and therefore failed to prevent, the bombings on 7/7." Though around a third of the victims initially survived the explosions, she found there was nothing more that the emergency services could have done to keep them alive. "I am satisfied on the balance of probabilities that each of them would have died whatever time the emergency services reached and rescued them," she said. The verdicts and recommendations were given to a packed courtroom at the Royal Courts of Justice in London following nearly five months of hearings which examined the attacks in detail, shedding new light on the worst terror atrocity on British soil. Over 73 days, some 309 witnesses gave evidence and a 197 statements were read. The hearings generated 34,000 documents. The attacks were carried out by four British Islamists, two of whom had made video statements spliced with footage of Al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri. The verdicts came less than a week after the death of Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden. Hallett made nine recommendations for the intelligence agencies, the emergency services and London's transport authority, aimed at saving lives in future. Recording verdicts of "unlawful killing" due to "injuries caused by an explosion", she said the victims were "without a shadow of a doubt" murdered by the four bombers: ringleader Mohammed Sidique Khan 30; Shehzad Tanweer, 22; Jermaine Lindsay, 19, and Hasib Hussain, 18. MI5 and the police had a number of clues which could have helped them identify British-born Khan as an extremist who had received training at a camp in Pakistan. However, the fragments of intelligence about him were never pieced together. The security services thought he was a small-time fraudster and focused on seemingly more pressing terror threats instead. "It may have been technically possible... to deduce Khan's sympathies and to identify him and or Tanweer, in intelligence terms, before 7/7," Hallett said. "However, there are a number of significant flaws in the argument that Khan should have been identified not only as a possible terrorist facilitator but as an attack planner, meriting the closest possible attention. "It would not be right or fair to criticise the Security Service for the fact they did not pay greater attention" to the information that related to Khan, she said. Her two recommendations for the security services concerned improving procedures for showing sources the best images and for recording decisions on the assessment of targets. Some victims' relatives called for a full public inquiry, while others said they were satisfied they now knew as much as they ever will about how their loved ones died. Others felt MI5 had been reluctant to give information to the inquests, while one bereaved mother broke down, feeling their plight had been overlooked while Britain fights to defend others abroad. Ros Morley, whose husband Colin was killed by Khan in the Edgware Road station blast, said she did not feel Britain was any safer nearly six years on. "I couldn't with certainty say yes because of what we heard about the deeply flawed systems within our security services," she told AFP. "I don't feel reassured because we don't know how many current major threats they're dealing with. They do get their successes but these problems with their systems are quite scary." Home Secretary Theresa May said the government would carefully consider Hallett's report. "Unfortunately, it is not possible to provide a risk-free world and we cannot guarantee that terrorists will never succeed. We must remain vigilant," she added.