Government rules out July 7 inquiry

London Evening Standard | May 11 2006

Downing Street has again ruled out a public inquiry into the July 7 bombings, despite calls from some survivors and relatives of victims.

Prime Minister Tony Blair's official spokesman said that the call for public scrutiny had to be balanced with "the need not to distract from the ongoing work of the security services and agencies".

It came as an official report into the attacks concluded that the chances of preventing the July 7 atrocities could have increased if extra resources had been in place sooner.

The cross-party Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) said two of the four bombers - Mohammed Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer - had been looked at by the Security Service MI5 a number of times but not fully investigated.

It also emerged for the first time that British spies had basic records on a third member of the terror cell before July 7. The report said that, after the attacks, MI5 discovered a telephone number for King's Cross/Russell Square bomber Germaine Lindsay in its files.

In a key passage of the report, the committee said: "The story of what was known about the July 7 group prior to July indicates that if more resources had been in place sooner the chances of preventing the July attacks could have increased. Greater coverage in Pakistan, or more resources generally in the UK, might have alerted the agencies to the intentions of the July 7 group."

The chances of preventing the July 7 attacks might also have been greater had different investigative decisions been made by MI5, the report said. But the MPs on the committee insisted the decisions not to prioritise Khan and Tanweer were "understandable".

It also warned that there would be an "inevitable" rise in intrusive activity by security services in the face of the terror threat.

The report recommended a more transparent threat level and alert system, and called for improvements to the way the Security Service MI5 and Special Branches tackle "home-grown" terrorism. The members said they were "concerned that more was not done sooner" about the terror threat from UK citizens.

ISC chairman Paul Murphy said on possible al Qaida links: "My instinct is that these were homegrown plots and that the links, which are still being looked at, are not as great as some people may have thought in the past. In some ways that is very worrying - that these plots could be hatched in our great cities in England."

Prison Planet.tv: The Premier Multimedia Subscription Package: Download and Share the Truth!