'Foreign terrorist cell' was behind London bombings

[janx]

Police were last night searching for a foreign-based Islamic terrorist cell after it was disclosed that three of the four bombs that hit London last Thursday exploded "almost simultaneously".

Ministers now believe that the bombings - which left at least 49 people dead in Britain's worst terrorist attack - were the work of a "very, very small number" of individuals who arrived from mainland Europe or North Africa on false passports within the past six months.

The authorities are braced for more atrocities as part of what they fear will be a campaign of terror by an active Islamic cell - although they believe that other European capitals are equally at risk.

The immediate investigation centres on King's Cross after transport police said that all three Tube bombs exploded within 50 seconds at around 8.50am, on trains that had stopped at its underground station within the previous 10 minutes.

Much more at link:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=2AWCXWQN5WH5PQFIQMGCNAGAVCBQUJVC?xml=/news/2005/07/10/ncrime310.xml

[Frederik]

1. Foreigners, British Islamists or mercenaries?

Seems like no one has the faintest idea who did it, as every newspaper interview "authorities" with different theories.

[acmavm]

2. Okay, if they know who they are, if they know they got in on false

passports six (6 mind you) months ago, why weren't they looking for them before this?

This is the stuff that confuses me. Like the Saudis that came here and did 911. Apparently we knew they were here, we knew they came in on student visa but weren't in school, or were attending flight school, or what-the-f***-ever, knew every step they had made and every person they had spoke to by the next day, but just let them mosey around like nothing was happening. I mean hello, some things are just not right. It's the old walk like a duck, talk like a duck premise.

Oh well, I'm no expert. Just strikes me as nuts.

[janx]

3. It is nuts.

This war in Iraq has worsened the situation to such an extent that nobody knows what is happening.

[Double T]

4. Speculation, Speculation and More Speculation......

Nobody knows anything that can be substantiated at this point, so why continue with the erroneous stories.

[screembloodymurder]

6. The bombing is being used for political gain.

It's sickening.

[Voltaire99]

8. True enough.

If it is Al Qaeda, then the only meaningful thing to be said is that the Bush-Blair war has been brought home, and theory of "fighting them there so they can't hurt us here" is, as was predicted, bust.

[jazzjunkysue]

5. You'd think that the CIA could at least try to fake it by setting the

fuses a couple of minutes apart. Only the CIA or scotland yard could get it this precise.

Come on, people (talking to Rove's hitmen) let's think like a terrorist, instead of an ivy league educated scientist with a master's in forensics.

[StrafingMoose]

7. Anyone picked up on this in UK yet?

http://www.infowars.com/articles/London_attack/same_time.htm

OK, yes I know it's Alex Jones's website, some of you may have some problems with this not being what you would call a source. But anyways, in this article they're citing/reporting on a interview a guy had on the BBC5 Radio. Said guy is working in a corporation that builds and designs crisis management plans.

Anyone heard the interview themselves?

Excerpt:

"A consultancy agency with government and police connections was running an exercise for an unnamed company that revolved around the London Underground being bombed at the exact same times and locations as happened in real life on the morning of July 7th.

On a BBC Radio 5 interview that aired on the evening of the 7th, the host interviewed Peter Power, Managing Director of Visor Consultants, which bills itself as a 'crisis management' advice company, better known to you and I as a PR firm.

Peter Power was a former Scotland Yard official, working at one time with the Anti Terrorist Branch.

Power told the host that at the exact same time that the London bombings were taking place, his company was running a 1,000 person strong exercise which drilled the London Underground being bombed at the exact same locations, at the exact same times, as happened in real life.

The transcript is as follows.

POWER: 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 up right now.

HOST: To get this quite straight, you were running an exercise to see how you would cope with this and it happened while you were running the exercise?

POWER: Precisely, and it was about half past nine this morning, we planned this for a company and for obvious reasons I don't want to reveal their name but they're listening and they'll know it. And we had a room full of crisis managers for the first time they'd met and so within five minutes we made a pretty rapid decision that this is the real one and so we went through the correct drills of activating crisis management procedures to jump from slow time to quick time thinking and so on."