(Updated; originally posted May 1, 2007)
Please see: Terror Expert: London Bomber Was Working For MI5
Do you know about Mr. Aswat or Mr. Khan, readers?
"5 Britons Guilty; Tied to 2005 London Bombers" by JANE PERLEZ and ELAINE SCIOLINO
LONDON, April 30 — A jury found five British Muslim men guilty on Monday of planning fertilizer-bomb attacks around London, ending a yearlong trial that linked the plotters with two of the four men who blew themselves up on London’s transit system in July 2005.
According to the evidence, revealed during the trial but made public for the first time on Monday, authorities had closely monitored meetings in 2004 between members of the two plots but never fully investigated the men who pulled off the transit attacks, which killed 56 people. To ensure a fair trial, the judge had ordered the news media not to make the information public until after the verdict.
That's because they were WORKING FOR THEM!
The disclosure turned a victory for British authorities into a day of hand-wringing and recriminations over whether they had missed an opportunity to prevent the deadliest terrorist attack in the country’s history.
(Author just shaking his head)
Within an hour of the verdict, the opposition Conservative Party and survivors and relatives of the victims of the transit attack demanded an investigation into why the authorities did not act on their surveillance.
We know why (Al-CIA-Duh)!
“Whether deliberately or not, the government have not told the British public the whole truth about the circumstances and mistakes leading up to the July 7 attacks,” said David Davis, the spokesman on counterterrorism for the Conservative Party....
Definitely DELIBERATE!
For its part, MI5, the domestic intelligence agency, a famously secretive organization, went public to defend itself, saying on its Web site on Monday that it had never been “complacent” in investigating the 2005 transit attacks.
Yeah, the term is COMPLICIT!
Last week, the head of MI5, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, retired and was replaced by Jonathan Evans, a Qaeda specialist. The agency said the change was unrelated to the disclosures from the investigation, which the authorities named Operation Crevice.
That law enforcement authorities knew of a connection between the two groups is especially embarrassing because three days after the 2005 attacks, Charles Clarke, then the Home Secretary, said they “simply came out of the blue.”
Translation: The "authorities" LIED!
The order by the judge, Sir Michael Astill, to keep the links between the groups secret was lifted Monday, as the jury delivered the verdicts after 27 days of deliberations.
The men were convicted of conspiracy to cause explosions by using 1,300 pounds of fertilizer stashed in a storage facility. Six of the seven men on trial are of Pakistani descent; the five who were convicted are British citizens.
There's that word again -- only applicable when they are prosecuting PATSIES!
Among their potential targets, the prosecution said, was a major suburban shopping center, a busy London nightclub known as the Ministry of Sound, public utilities and a British airliner, all places mentioned by the plotters in conversations the authorities had taped.
Judge Astill sentenced the five to life imprisonment, saying, “You have betrayed the country that has given you every advantage in life.”
What about the government facilitators who directed the "attack?"
The ringleader, Omar Khyam, 25, an ardent cricket player, grew up in a secular Muslim household in West Sussex, just outside London....
??
The surveillance evidence brought to light in the trial — including hours of audio tapes — showed that Mr. Khyam, the leader of the plot, had met several times with the leader of what have become known as the 7/7 attacks, Mohammad Sidique Khan....
Do you know about Mr. Khan, readers? Khan is MI5!
Mr. Khyam said Pakistan’s intelligence agency was involved in running training camps focusing on Kashmir that he attended in 2000. In one of the trial’s most dramatic moments, Mr. Khyam abruptly broke off his testimony to say that Pakistan’s intelligence agency had contacted his family in Pakistan and intimidated them. He did not offer any proof.
That organization, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, is supposed to be one of Pakistan’s crucial organizations in helping the United States hunt down Al Qaeda.
I can hardly keep from busting a gut on that one!
Another Crevice defendant... told the jury that he had been held for 10 months by the Pakistani intelligence agency and subjected to torture.
He confessed only after being physically and mentally abused by the Pakistanis, he said. A videotape was played during the trial of [him] telling the British police of the Crevice plot immediately after he was brought back to Britain from Pakistan.
TORTURE WORKS!!!
Overall, Scotland Yard said the Crevice operation involved thousands of police and intelligence officers and a huge effort of telephone bugging, human surveillance and videotaping.
It was that surveillance web that also picked up the two July 7 plotters: Mr. Khan and Shehzad Tanweer. Britain’s MI5 domestic intelligence service followed the two men, photographed them and even listened in on Mr. Khan’s conversations.
But the agents never fully investigated either of them, deciding they were not a terrorist threat but rather “petty fraudsters in loose contact with members of the plot,” MI5 said Monday on its Web site.
On a number of occasions in February and March 2004, MI5 agents monitored Mr. Khan and Mr. Tanweer interacting with the Crevice suspects....
It's called a SET-UP!
Investigators monitored the Crevice suspects so closely that they had placed a bug in Mr. Khyam’s car.
In the most telling conversation in Mr. Khyam’s car, on Feb. 21, 2004, Mr. Khan gave the impression that Mr. Khyam was a more senior operative than he.
“Are you really a terrorist?” Mr. Khan asked Mr. Khyam, according to a transcript of the conversation read in court.
Mr. Khyam replied, “They are working with us.”
To that, Mr. Khan asked again, “You are serious, you are basically?”
“I am not a terrorist; they are working through us,” Mr. Khyam said.
Mr. Khan replied, “Who are? There is no one higher than you.”
Gee, WHOM could he be referring to, readers?
The exchange has raised questions about whether the group was receiving guidance and support from another group or individuals, perhaps Al Qaeda operatives based in Pakistan.
Or MI5?
The men also discussed carrying out fraud operations and holding up banks in Britain before they would flee to Pakistan. Mr. Khyam suggested they were not coming back.
“This one-way ticket, bruv, yeah?” Mr. Khyam asked Mr. Khan, adding, “You’re going to leave now, you might as well rip the country apart economically as well.”
Mr. Khyam also said: “All the brothers are running scams. All the brothers that are leaving are doing it.”
Right, blame the "terrorists" for economic mismanagement.
In the conversation on Feb. 21, 2004, Mr. Khan said he intended to travel to Pakistan to join Arab fighters to fight abroad, and he debated whether to wait until his wife gave birth to their child so he could say goodbye.
That is NOT the profile of a "suicider."
There were other occasions during the Crevice investigation in which both of the London suicide bombers came into the sights of MI5 agents.
On Feb. 2, 2004, the agents, using audio and visual devices, spotted Mr. Khan and Mr. Tanweer at a gas station about 40 miles north of London with Mr. Khyam and his younger brother, Shujah.
On Feb. 28, MI5 agents tailed Mr. Khan and Mr. Tanweer in Mr. Khan’s green Honda Civic for 15 hours as they drove behind the Khyam brothers.
Among their destinations were a McDonald’s in Crawley, a kebab take-out restaurant in Slough and Mr. Khyam’s home. The four men later went to an Internet cafe, where they spent the evening.
Whatta bunch of patsies!! Went to a McDonalds?
Anti-American jihadis? STOP with the LYING!!!!
On March 23, intelligence agents again watched Mr. Khan and Mr. Tanweer and the two Khyam brothers as they drove in a two-car convoy. Mr. Khyam and Mr. Khan discussed passports, how to raise money fraudulently from as many banks as possible and the trip to Pakistan, according to a closed pretrial hearing.
Seven days later, more than 700 police officers raided several sites, shutting down what they suspected was a cell and arresting 18 people, six of them the Crevice defendants.
But the police apparently never searched the home of Mr. Khan or Mr. Tanweer, according to police briefings to journalists.
Why would they? Those guys MI5!!!
Testimony in the Crevice trial showed that Mr. Khan was involved with the Crevice plotters not only in Britain, but also in Pakistan....
After the Crevice arrests, Mr. Khan attended two other military training camps in Pakistan before carrying out the 2005 bombings. But since he was not under surveillance, his movements went unnoticed.
Classic behavior regarding a western-intel asset!
The prosecution’s star witness in the Crevice trial was Mohammed Junaid Babar, a Pakistani American who was arrested in New York and agreed to a plea bargain in exchange for his testimony....
Little CONFLICT of INTEREST there, no?
During his testimony, Mr. Babar, who was attacked as a liar by the defense, said that Mr. Khyam had told him that he and the other “brothers” were not just a local operation but that they reported to a man he described as the No. 3 in Al Qaeda, Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi.
American officials said it was possible that he is the same man who they acknowledged last week was in custody at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. It was plausible, they said, that he had met some of the Crevice plotters when they visited training camps in Pakistan. But the officials said it was unclear exactly what role, if any, Mr. Iraqi had played in planning either the Crevice plot or the 2005 attacks.
Mr. Babar said that Mr. Khyam told him that Mr. Iraqi gave the orders on how they should behave on their Malakand pilgrimage. The camp was a formative experience, he said. “Prior to the camp, the guys were joking around and using slang,” he said. “After the camp, the guys were talking jihad, praying and quoting the Koran. They were saying, ‘Let’s go kill’ ” the infidel."
Like they were BRAINWASHED, right?
