The Demand for a Public Inquiry into the London Bombings

Many of the survivors of London bombings of July 7, 2005, which killed
52 people and injured more than 700, are demanding a public inquiry and pointing out that vital questions remain unanswered by the government.

  A Home Office spokeswoman said recently, “The Home Secretary does not believe the public inquiry would add to our understanding of the causes of those atrocities.” But Jacqui Putnam, a survivor from an adjacent carriage to one of the bombs on the underground, said that “there are other things, questions that should be answered that need to be answered publicly. There are people whose lives will never be the same, the bereaved who have lost their loved ones – we need answers.”

 “The big question is always ‘why?’,” Kirsty Jones, who was also on the Piccadilly Line train, said. “July 7 was so extraordinary that it is puzzling there has been no inquiry.”

Unanswered Questions Surrounding the July 7 Bombings

Many unanswered questions remain regarding the bombings, particularly as to who organised and carried them out and what was the motivation for their actions.

The official conspiracy theory, promoted by the government and the media, is that four young Muslims, Mohammed Sidique Khan, Shehzad Tanweer, Hasib Mir Hussain and Germaine Lindsay, under the influence of Al-Qaida fundamentalist Islamic ideology conspired together. Then on July 7, they travelled to Luton by car from where they took a train to King’s Cross station in London. At King’s Cross, they separated, boarded underground trains and a bus and set off bombs which they were carrying. The evidence which has so far been put into the public domain as proof of the truthfulness of this theory is a CCTV image which allegedly shows the four young men entering Luton station on the morning of July 7, and two videos aired initially by Al Jazeera TV.
One of these videos, which was aired in September 2005, purports to show Mohammed Sidique Khan and the second video, aired on July 6, 2006, purports to show Shehzad Tanweer outlining their political views. These videos are being presented as proof positive of the accuracy of the
official conspiracy theory.   Rather conveniently for the proponents of
this theory, none of these young men are alive and so are in no position to answer the allegations levelled against them.

The trustworthiness of government and corporate media accounts of events can be judged in the light  of the definite claim that the government of Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, that
Jean Charles de Menezes, the young Brazilian shot and killed   at
Stockwell station had been wearing a heavy coat in hot weather and had fled and jumped over the ticket barrier when challenged by police and that “credible” information had been received indicating that the house in Forest Gate contained a chemical weapon. All of these accounts turned out to be based on falsehoods.

If, however, the official conspiracy theory is not to be taken on trust, there are a number of outstanding questions which need to be answered if there is to be any clarity as to what actually happened on July 7 and who bears responsibility for the death and destruction of that day.

1. Who contracted Visor Consultants to run an “anti-terrorist” rehearsal at the stations where the bombs exploded and who selected those particular stations for the drill?

Mr Peter Power, Managing Director of Disaster and Crisis Management firm, Visor Consultants, interviewed by Radio 5 Live's Drivetime programme on the afternoon of July 7, 2005, said:

"...at half past nine this morning we were actually running an exercise for a company of over a thousand people in London based on simultaneous bombs going off precisely at the railway stations where it happened this morning, so I still have the hairs on the back of my neck standing upright!"

2. What role, if any, has Haroon Rashid Aswat played in these events?  Reports circulating at the time of the explosions identified him as the so-called “mastermind” of the London bombings.
He was subsequently arrested in Zambia and returned to Britain. In the US, a “terror expert”, John Loftus, told Fox News' Dayside show that Haroon Rashid Aswat was an MI6 intelligence asset that British security helped protect and hide before the bombings.

3. Why did the police identify these four young men as the perpetrators of the July 7 bombings, given the number of dead bodes that must have been found in London on that day? What precise forensic evidence led them to draw this conclusion? It has been said that these young men were identified by their credit cards, but why would their credit cards lead the police to the conclusion that they were the perpetrators?

4. What precisely did the police and secret services know about the four accused and what links did they have with them prior to July 7, 2005.

Initially, the official conspiracy theory claimed that these four individuals were completely unknown to the police and the secret
services. However, more recently, some doubt has been shed on this.   A
US journalist, Ron Suskind, claimed that Mohammed Sidique Khan was considered so dangerous by the FBI that in 2003 the US placed him on a "no fly list". This claim has been denied by the FBI which has argued that it is based on a case of mistaken identity. The author, however, stands by his claim.

            
Furthermore, Martin Gilbertson, a computer technician who helped to encrypt emails at an Islamic bookshop in Leeds where Khan and Tanweer used to go claims that in October 2003 he delivered a dossier to West Yorkshire anti-terrorist police outlining his concerns about the views of Shehzad Tanweer and Mohammed Sidique Khan. There have also been further allegations that Mohammed Sidique Khan’s car was bugged by MI5 and even that he was working for them. The former claim has been denied by the police.

5. On what evidence do the police base their reconstruction of the train journey of the 4 young men from Luton to London?
Initially, it was claimed that they travelled from Luton on the 0740 train arriving at King’s Cross Thameslink station at 0816 and that the police had a further CCTV image of the four at Kings Cross station at 0826. However, research carried out by the July 7 Truth Campaign has established that on 7 July 2005, the 0740 was cancelled and the next train to leave was the 0748 which arrived at Kings Cross Thameslink station at 0842. According to information from the Department of Transport, the tubes on which the bombs exploded departed Kings Cross at 0835, 0842 and 0848, so it would have been impossible for anyone travelling on the 0748 from Luton on that day to have exploded a bomb on either of the first two underground trains on which bombs did explode. Even if they had caught the 0730 which actually departed at 0742 and arrived at Kings Cross at 0839, it would have been impossible for them to have travelled on either of the first two tubes on which bombs exploded.

Since the CCTV image allegedly showing the four young men going into Luton station is time stamped 07.21.54, the earliest possible train they could have caught on that day, which was marked by disruption to the regular service, would have been the 0724 which actually departed at 0725 and arrived at Kings Cross at 0823. Given that Transport for London advises allocating 6 minutes for transfer between Kings Cross Thameslink and the underground station, it is difficult to see how these four young men could then be captured on a CCTV image in Kings Cross underground at 0826.

These are only some of the unanswered questions which continue to surround the July 7 bombings and without the answers to which, it will be impossible to make any clear judgement regarding what happened on that day. Many survivors of these events are calling for a full public inquiry into the events of that day to provide precisely these answers. On the other hand, the corporate media are attempting to subvert this demand by raising a call for an inquiry into the  "intelligence failures" that led up to the July 7 bombings. This is an attempt to consolidate the official conspiracy theory as "the truth of what happened on the day” and on this basis to divert attention from the many unanswered questions which remain about the July 7 bombings.

 
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