TERRORISM: Timers Used In London Blasts; Parelells To Madrid Found

Parellells to the Madrid Train bombings were indicated by the timers used to detonate the bombs on board the two London subway trains, according to London Police investigators. This was the first time that authorities released information showing that the two underground trains were not destroyed by suicide bombers.



It appears, then, that there probably, is some connection to Al Qaeda even though British authorities are not admitting it outright. The referrence to Denmark and Italy being targets as well makes it even more likely, to my mind, that this was indeed an AQ attack.

It is interesting that they think that the suicide bomb that blew the roof of the city bus was detonated prematurely and was intended for another site. It makes you wonder:
"Which other site"? No. 10 Downing St? Buckingham Palace?


Related News Links:
www.cnn.com
www.timesonline.co.uk
www.newsday.com

Related AboveTopSecret.com Discussion Threads:
Entire London Underground shutdown after serious of explosions
Entire London Underground shutdown after serious of explosions
Does Al-Qaeda, Bin Laden, Zarqawi etc Exist?

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Well, this is something very few people seem to know as it is not making the news on many western countries including the US, but Al Qaeda's first target before 3/11 in Madrid, Spain was France. According to information found by the authorities in Spain and in other countries including France, Al Qaeda had a plan for a 9/11 type attack in France, several times they also tried to make other attacks. Later on the plan was moved to attack Spain instead of France.

It is strange that France, and other European countries are still a target for Islamic extremists, and a lot of people in France, and Europe for that matter, do not want a war against those same Islamic extremists that have set their minds on destroying the west if we all do not submit to Islam.

Spain among others is still a target to Al Qaeda despite them getting out of the war.

Spain Still A Target

By EURSOC Two
14 March, 2005

A year after Spain's worst terrorist atrocity, security forces claim that hundreds of Islamist militants are still planning attacks on the country.

Excerpted from.
www.eursoc.com...

And the attack in Spain in 3/11 was not because of the war. European countries are awakening to this fact.

Professor Reinares argued that the assertion of a direct causal link between Iraq and 3/11 is “a great simplification.” Spain may be the first European country where Islamic extremists were successful in conducting a mass-casualty attack, but it is not the first where Al Qaeda planned a massacre (e.g., Al Qaeda’s mega-terrorism plan in France in 2000). Nor has its plans been confined to countries that participated in the Iraq war. The actual decision to target Spain’s trains was made in late 2003, but the 3/11 group formed in late 2001 after the Spanish authorities had dismantled the previous Al Qaeda network in the aftermath of 9/11. The Egyptian ringleader of the 3/11 network was arrested in Italy and confessed that the train bombings had taken two-and-a-half years to organize. Spain’s participation in the Iraq war created a propitious political environment for carrying out bombings that had been long in the works. In short, the war was the occasion not the cause of the bombing.

Excerpted from.
wwics.si.edu...


[edit on 8-7-2005 by Muaddib]

Thank you, Muadib, for that very informative post you've made. It would show everyone that Islamic terrorists would still target and destroy the Western states if it continues to be something starkly contrarily to Islamic teachings and ways of life under Islam.

Didn't a revered Muslim imam say something about it's okay for Muslims to stone women and behead gays in New Zealand?

I couldn't read the original NYT article because it required a subscription. But, here is my question: Did the article state anything about how the timers were to be activated? I have heard that cell phones may not have been used as the trigger because the signal is unreliable in underground tunnels, etc.

The NYT article did not specify what type of timer was used or how it was activated. I apologize to anyone who did not get a chance to read the full article due to subscription requirements; I have pasted the entire article below:

By DON VAN NATTA Jr. and ELAINE SCIOLINO
Published: July 8, 2005
LONDON, July 7 - Investigators searching for clues in the attacks here said Thursday that the three bombs used in the subway apparently were detonated by timers, not suicide bombers, and that a fourth device may have been intended for a target other than the city bus that it destroyed.
Senior police officials said they had not received a message claiming responsibility for the attacks from any group, and had made no arrests. But officials immediately drew parallels between the London bombings and the ones that struck commuter trains in Madrid 16 months ago, which were carried out by a Qaeda-inspired cell.

By Thursday night, there were far more questions than answers confronting Scotland Yard. One official said none of the scores of suspected terrorists being watched closely in England appeared to be involved.

Police and intelligence officials acknowledged that they were taken completely by surprise by the coordinated bombings, even though they had been anticipating a terrorist attack for years.

The officials said there was no warning or even a hint that an attack was imminent among the blizzard of intelligence accumulated in recent days by the Metropolitan Police and by MI5, the domestic intelligence services.

"There was no intelligence in our possession that these attacks were going to take place today," said Brian Paddick, deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. "We were given no warning from any organization that this was going to happen."

Since Sept. 11, 2001, senior police officials have warned that a large-scale terror attack in Britain was not a matter of if but when, a prediction repeated by a senior police official late last month.

The Joint Terrorist Analysis Center even reduced the threat level of a terrorist attack from "severe-general" to "substantial" early last month. There are seven levels to the security scale, with severe-general the third most severe and substantial the fourth.

The threat levels are not made public, but they reflect the intelligence on potential attacks and help officials to make decisions about staff levels. The alert level was not raised to coincide with the opening of the Group of 8 summit meeting in Scotland, officials said.

Mr. Paddick and other police officials denied that the lower ranking affected the level of the emergency response to the bombings on Thursday. He also rejected the suggestion that the ranking reflected a conclusion that the terrorist threat had eased here.

"We felt it was appropriate, bearing in mind all the intelligence that we were in possession of," he said. "We are content that the security system was appropriate, notwithstanding the G-8 summit that was happening in Scotland."

Michael Mates, a senior member of Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee, said, "There was certainly a heightened awareness this week, although it's likely that resources were a bit more focused on the G-8 summit."

Upon his return to London on Thursday afternoon, Prime Minister Tony Blair vowed that the authorities would mount "the most intense police and security investigation to bring those responsible to justice."

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the explosions bore "the hallmarks of an Al Qaeda-related attack," but police officials stopped short of assigning any blame to a particular group.

A group calling itself the Secret Organization of Al Qaeda in Europe announced on a Web site that it was responsible for the bombings. The announcement also threatened Italy and Denmark, which have provided troops to the American-led coalition fighting in Iraq.

The authenticity of the message could not be confirmed, and several experts said they strongly doubted that it was authentic.

American intelligence officials said they had begun a detailed review of data gathered in recent weeks to search for possible clues. "Everybody's going back and looking over their reporting to see if we overlooked anything or failed to share it," one senior intelligence official said.

Counterterrorism officials in London said they were still trying to determine the type of explosives that were used. One official speculated that the No. 30 bus whose roof was blown off at 9:47 a.m. in Bloomsbury was demolished accidentally by a suicide bomber. But another theory gaining momentum was that the bomb exploded prematurely as a bomber was carrying it to an intended target, several American and British counterterrorism officials said.

The officials said that the three subway bombs appeared to have been detonated by timers, not cellphones or other remote triggers. The bombs on the trains were believed to be package bombs and are believed to have been left by the attackers who fled before they went off.

Officials refused to confirm or deny reports that two unexploded package bombs were recovered from trains. A senior American intelligence official said the British had conducted "at least one controlled explosion" of a suspicious package found after the attacks, but he said he could not confirm that the package was another bomb.

The bombings in Madrid and London were separated by 16 months, and the ones in Madrid were set off by cell phones. But the attacks bear eerie similarities and grim lessons for counterterrorism officials.

"Madrid carried terror to the heart of Europe, but we never believed we would be a lonely, unique case," Jorge Dezcallar, who was the head of Spain's foreign intelligence service at the time of the Madrid attacks, said in a telephone interview. "We just had the bad luck of being chosen as the first target, but not the last. London, like Madrid, proves how vulnerable we are."

Like Madrid, the attacks on London were aimed not at symbols of power like Big Ben or Westminster Abbey but at the mundane: ordinary workers making their way to work at the busiest time of the day. In Madrid, 191 people were killed by the 10 bombs that ripped through four commuter trains during the morning rush hour.

The effect in both cities was to paralyze the ordinary workings of the city. British authorities announced that every inch of every subway train in London would be examined to insure that no more explosives had been planted, just as the Spanish authorities examined every commuter train.

"The explosions were designed to elicit panic among the people," Gen. Hamidou Laanigri, Morocco's chief of security, said in a telephone interview. "That is always the logic of terrorism: to get the maximum attention and impact."

Another similarity is that politics may have played a role in the timing. Thursday was the first day of the Group of 8 talks, led by Mr. Blair at Gleneagles, near Edinburgh. The bombings in Madrid came three days ahead of a close national election.

Both Spain and Britain sent troops to aid the American-led war in Iraq and the military attack in Afghanistan, although it is not known whether support for American foreign policies played a role in the London attack.

British and Spanish intelligence services are operating on the assumption that a network with allegiance to Al Qaeda, either Arabs or one of the emerging Pakistani groups in Europe, was responsible for the London attacks, several intelligence officials said.

"It is still too early to definitively say who carried out these attacks," said Matt Levitt, a former F.B.I. agent and now a senior fellow and director of terrorism studies at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "But as the investigation into the London bombings proceeds, authorities should not be surprised if the evidence reveals a more critical link to the Madrid attacks."

Senior counterterrorism officials say Al Qaeda had evolved from a structured, hierarchical group to a decentralized organization that relies on small independent groups to carry out "Al Qaeda-inspired attacks."

"There have been a lot of attempts" in London, said Baltasar Garzón, a Spanish judge who has investigated Al Qaeda for years. "And in this case, they finally hit some of the easiest targets with these trains. Their only real obstacle to this kind of action is getting the explosives. Once they have them, it's very easy to attack targets like Sunday trains."

Mr. Mates, of the Intelligence and Security Committee, said it had been only a matter of time before a coordinated attack struck London. He said the authorities had thwarted at least three coordinated attacks in London since 9/11. "We've caught and prevented those who were trying to get through and stopped them," he said.

Britain has considerable experience investigating bombs and identifying those responsible, based on years of attacks in London and in Northern Ireland by the Irish Republican Army.

Since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Osama bin Laden and other groups have threatened to attack Britain in retaliation for its support of the United States. Last April, Mr. bin Laden demanded that Britain and other American allies pull out of Iraq by July 15, 2004. The deadline passed without incident.

Counterterrorism officials have said they worried that the prime target was the 142-year-old Underground, the world's busiest subway system, which ferries three million people each day. The subway and most public streets are monitored by a vast network of closed-circuit television cameras, whose images were being reviewed Thursday by investigators.

Officials said they were confident that the forensic investigation collected at the four sites would yield clues that might help them identify and arrest those responsible for the attacks. They also hoped to recover DNA samples from bombs and body fragments. All those arrested in Britain must provide DNA samples even if they do not face criminal charges.

An update - UK news agencies now report that these explosions were in fact caused by suicide bombers - 3 of whom have already been publicly identified. A vehicle used by them has been seized. At least one arrest has been made and houses in Leeds searched. Bomb making equipment has been found. Police are now looking for the bomb maker fearing that further attacks may have already been planned.