lootin' terrorists

ok so heres a wrapup of the news about the presumed london perps.

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* "Four home-grown suicide bombers, three of them from West Yorkshire and none of them known to the police, carried out last Thursday's bomb attacks on London, police believe." LINK

* "Four men, between 18 and 30, three of them with West Yorkshire addresses and all of them British, met up at Luton station before boarding a Thameslink train to King's Cross last Thursday morning."

* "Closed circuit television film from around 8.20am that day shows the four young men, all with identical large rucksacks similar to those carried by infantry soldiers on their backs. The four appeared relaxed. "You would have thought they were going on a hiking holiday," said the senior security source, who has seen the footage. It is likely to be released today."

* "At Colwyn Road in Beeston, as police searched a house belonging to the Tanweer family, a car hire firm arrived to collect an overdue hire car. Staff were immediately interviewed by police."

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* Wednesday July 13: "Detectives are scrutinising 2,500 tapes of CCTV footage in the hope of discovering vital clues which might identify the London bombers.
Scotland Yard confirmed officers were starting the painstaking task of reviewing images from across the capital" LINK

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* "Earlier that morning the four British men of Pakistani origin had met at Luton train station. Their rucksacks packed with explosives, they boarded the 7.48am Thameslink train and arrived at King's Cross in north London at 8.20am." LINK

* "The friends, three aged 30, 23 and 19, had travelled from Leeds, West Yorkshire, that morning having picked up the mobile bombs, probably from a house in the Burley district of Leeds. The gang is thought to have driven down in two or three hire cars."

* "The youngest of the group, Hasib Hussain, 19 is thought to have planned to head north, but the Northern line was closed so he headed to the street above King's Cross and caught a No 30 double-decker bus."

* "At 7.05am yesterday, police raided an address at Thornton Park Avenue, in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, where retired and recently widowed former high school teacher Farida Patel lives.
Within an hour or so, police raided an address at Lees Holm, council houses a five-minute drive away"

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* "Explosives were also found in a car at Luton railway station, which is thought to have been used by the bombers to drive from Leeds on Thursday." LINK

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* " The whole London operation probably cost less than £1,000." LINK

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* "Three of the men had travelled to Luton from Leeds by train, before catching a Thameslink train to London. They had been joined at Luton by a fourth man who had driven to the Bedfordshire town." LINK
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* "Three of the four men travelled from their homes in Leeds and Dewsbury last Thursday. They arrived off a Thameslink train at Kings Cross station shortly before 8.30am, linked up with a fourth man then split up.
Twenty minutes later the first of four explosions which killed at least 52 people shook the capital." LINK

* "Yesterday one man was arrested in police swoops on six addresses in Leeds and Dewsbury. In one of the raids a large stock of explosives - enough for several more bombs - was found."

* "Detectives believe the group may have also hired several cars.
They only discovered the clue when an agent from a hire company turned up at a raided address in Colwyn Road, Beeston, South Leeds, and told police that a rental car had not been returned."
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* "Police sources suggest that the Northern line was not operating properly at that time and the fourth bomber may then have decided to take a bus without necessarily knowing in which direction it was heading, particularly if he was not familiar with the city." LINK
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as you know, ive previously scoffed at some 'experts' who had stated that a) the perps were "almost certainly British born and bred" (here is Lord Stevens' article) and b) that they were either local to KingsX or from up north somewhere.

it turns out that i was exactly wrong on both counts. fancy that! you might think that'd be sufficient to get me to shut-up, but that would be exactly wrong :-)

"almost certainly" - thats pretty extraordinary language from the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police given that a) 911 and madrid were caused by foreigners b) england is at war with people who are also famous for this sort of attack. even for an expert, id imagine that "very possibly" might have been a more appropriate choice of words - but what do i know?

as to the idea that "the bombers may live close to that area or have travelled in by train from Essex, Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire or beyond", it simply didnt make any sense to me that geographic 'convenience' would be a major factor for people trying to make a major impact in this manner after 'months and months' of meticulous planning. again, but what would i know?

perhaps not surprisingly, im tempted to ask whether people who made such predictions are geniuses, or whether they 'knew' in advance. i'll agree that the evidence looks pretty compelling - 4 guys hanging out together who end up in each of the explosions seems to be pretty damning evidence, to be sure, and i sure dont have a comprehensive theory about what happened - but there are still some (significant?) questions.

firstly, let me remind you that i know the routes involved pretty well. my brother lives in dewsbury which is where 2 of the 'homicide bombers' came from and where the raids were today - so ive done the leeds/kingsX trip on a number of occassions - both on the train, and on the road - the only thing that can be confidently said about the trip is that it sucks whichever way, and most importantly, its *totally* variable. the total trip time is about 2.5 hours by train, and longer by road.

the reason i mention this is that the perps seem to have been operating on a pretty tight schedule - theres nothing wrong with running on a tight schedule, of course, but if you were gonna try to pull off a meticulous operation that has been in planning for months and months, one of the last things u'd do is rely on the uk transport system - road or rail. let me put it this way, if i was going to a nephews birthday party up there, id do my best to build in a time-cushion.

this is important because we can probably assume that the bombings were supposed to occur at peak hour - shortly before nine - to cause the maximum carnage. the explosions occured at 8.50am, which was presumably the plan, and similar to madrid.

we learn (above) that they got on a train at luton at 7.48 for an arrival at kingsX of 8.20. the explosions happened at 8.50 - and the explosions were 8 minutes from kingsX - so they got into kingsX at 8.20 (assuming the train was on schedule ) and were all on their respective trains at 8.42 for an 8.50 'kickoff'. that means there was a 22 minute 'cushion' in their plans which was supposed to accomodate a) possible delays in their arrival time from luton b) 'walking time' around the kingsX maze c) the likelihood/possibility that theyd 'miss' trains because of the wall of humanity between them and the trains. we've all been there, repeatedly, where you watch train after train go by and you simply cant get on - because a) the train is full and b) there are so many people in front of you.

in any reality-based world, theres simply no way you'd plan things this way - was it a bad plan? were they running late at luton ('oh shit - i forgot my toothbrush, lets go back')? were they indifferent to the fact that it was peak hour and just wanted to get to london and blow some stuff (including themselves) up and just happened to be lucky that they attacked at the time of maximum damage?

these people were able to procure military explosives - but couldnt organise a hotel in london the previous night? they'd rather rely on londons notorious transport system down to a few minutes over a 3 hour trip ? c'mon.

i cant quite remember the specifics, but the 911'ers also suffered from similar planning problems - rushing hither and tither at the last minute. lemme know and ill chase it up if u like.

we also have other oddities - like, for example, the fact that these folks left a car at luton with explosives in it. maybe they were hoping that they failed at suiciding and wanted to be able to come back and collect the explosives so they could suicide themselves again... its difficult to not remember the white van with koranic tapes in madrid, or the renta-cars on 911 with the 'shine-your-shoes' reminder. if i was a suicider, its difficult to imagine thinking 'nah - 10 pounds is enough, ill leave the remainder in the car' and given that there were some more bombs found in the raids at the homes (details about where they were found are scarce) - either they left some more bombs at home - or friends of bombers didnt think the identity of the bombers would get discovered, and were therefore happy keeping explosives at home - knowing that the police would never come knocking?

another thing to consider is that we were repeatedly told how much sophisticated recon work was involved - months and months of planning and all that - heres a simple question that we can ask the families of the suiciders - "how often did said perps make the 3 hour trip to london in the last 6 months?"

in summary, the people who meticulously planned for months and months and were able to procure military explosives to conduct the most significant attack in a generation decided to put their faith in the british public transit system to the level of military precision and the most senior officers of the establishment accurately predicted the outcome (income?) in advance.

im glad im not a mainstream journalist.


update: btw, renting a car in your own name and leaving it at a train station with unexploded bombs inside is perhaps the only guaranteed way to get caught at this stuff, short of a confessional video.

last week i wrote a post predicting they'd find unexploded bombs.

btw - in case you missed it, the 4 cctv cameras on the bus failed. i wrote about that here. this story didnt get any attention at all for some reason.

ill keep posting updates at the homepage wotisitgood4.blogspot.com - theres more there already.