July 7th Alternative Hypotheses
2. al-Qa'ida mastermind recruited British Muslims, but duped them in so far as the latter did not know they were going to die in the explosions.
The notion of 'suicide bombings' did not appear to be given serious consideration in the early days following the atrocities, with the police stating that the evidence did not point to suicide attacks. In a press conference on the 8th of July 2005, Sir Ian Blair was asked specifically by a reporter from The Sun if the bus had been suicide bombed:
QUESTION: Ian Hepburn, “The Sun”
There were suggestions yesterday that a bomber could have blown himself up on the bus. Do you believe that that's still the situation? That's not been confirmed.
BLAIR: No, as I said earlier on, Ian, there is absolutely nothing to suggest this was a suicide bomb. There is nothing to suggest that. We can't rule it out. It may have been that. But it may also have been a bomb that was left on a seat. It may also be a bomb that went off in transit. These things are still open to the investigation. And I think the continuous reference to suicide bombing is unhelpful, because it's completely unproven.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I will come to you.
QUESTION: Just following on from that, and I have a second question. But just following on that, is it the working assumption at the moment that those on the Tubes were devices which were left? They weren't with an individual when they went off, or can you not know?
BLAIR: I just don't think we can answer this question. As Andy has already said is it looks like the ones on the Tube were on the floor. So that may give you some idea, but that's...
QUESTION: So, you have no clues as to whether they were in the control of individuals?
BLAIR: We do not at this stage, no.
Source: CNN
The next day, The Telegraph reiterated that there was no evidence to confirm suicide bombings, with some added speculation:
The bombers may have planted the devices then merged with the rush-hour crowds of commuters. They may have gone straight to Heathrow or boarded a Eurostar train, fleeing on false documents, or they may be back at home in Britain. It is possible that they are already planning further atrocities.
Source: The Telegraph
On the same day, The Times claimed “Investigators are increasingly convinced that only one bomber — who killed 13 people in the explosion on a double-decker bus — died in the blasts.”
On July 10th, The Independent reported that the “latest evidence” suggested that the bombs had been placed on the floors of the three trains, which “heightens the possibility that the bombers simply stepped off as the doors closed, and may have been back on the street when the bombs exploded within 50 seconds of each other.” The report also pointed out that the shortness of the intervals between explosions made it more likely that timers were used – in which case suicide bombers would, of course, have been unnecessary. Incredibly, the former head of Israeli intelligence service Mossad, Efraim Halevi, writing on the day of the attacks, knew that the explosions had been simultaneous whilst investigators still believed that the bombs had detonated several minutes apart, calling the explosions – rather strangely – a “near-perfect execution.”
Once it was reported that four men had died in the bombings who the police believed had been carrying the bombs, the possibility that they had been duped was raised within days. Firstly by The Mirror on July 16th 2005, who pointed out that the men had bought return tickets from Luton to London (although the Official Report states that it is not known what type of tickets the four possessed or where they were purchased), diligently paid for parking tickets and did not have bombs strapped to their bodies in the traditional manner of suicide bombers. The following day, The Telegraph carried a similar report, claiming,
One hypothesis is that the bombers' al-Qa'eda "controller" had told them that timers would give them a chance to escape, but that in fact the devices were always primed to go off immediately. A security official said: "The bombers' masters might have thought that they couldn't risk the four men being caught and spilling everything to British interrogators. The stakes were too high so they could have lied to them and deliberately sent them to their deaths."
Source: The Telegraph
Both reports made the point that it is unusual for suicide bombers to carry the ID and documentation that reportedly led to the police identifying them as the perpetrators so expeditiously. The Telegraph observed, “Police at first thought that this was because they wanted to be acknowledged by sympathisers as "martyrs", but now they are not so sure. Suicide bombers usually carry nothing that might identify them.” Interestingly, in another report just under three years later, The Telegraph related that the suspects had apparently decided they did want to be acknowledged as “martyrs” after all, reporting on allegations made by the prosecution during the 2008 trial of three men accused of conspiring with the suspects that they had “scattered identity and bank cards around the Tube carriages they targeted before placing their rucksacks on the floor and setting off the explosives inside them ”. The extreme difficulty in this claim, that the men had, completely unnoticed on a train packed with underground commuters, managed to scatter their identification around the carriage before detonating the bombs is also mentioned in Hypothesis 8. One might also ask, if Jermaine Lindsay was so desperate to be identified by carefully placing his documentation around the carriage, why was his identification in the name of Tyrone Smith?
On July 28th, The International Herald Tribune reported, “Some officials say the initial hypothesis that the July 7 attacks were carried out by determined fanatics willing to die in the name of a radical interpretation of Islam may have been too simplistic.”
Certainly, the four accused did not behave as if they were shortly going to die. Hasib Hussain's father spoke of his son's forthcoming marriage and plans to buy a new car. The day after the bombings, Hasib's family received his NVQ results; he had scored four distinctions in five subjects. The New York Times claimed one of the accused “had just spent a large sum to repair his car”; this was presumably Shehzad Tanweer, who had paid for the hire of the Nissan Micra in which he, Khan and Hussain had travelled to Luton on the morning of July 7th 2005. Tanweer was, according to Imran Hussain, brother of Hasib, playing a game of cricket in the park the night before the bombings, leaving a bewildered Imran to ask “How could he do that when he knew what he was about to carry out?”
The cricket game was referred to by a counter-terrorist expert at a seminar in Preston, Lancashire, who told delegates that the accused did not fit the terrorist profile,
The unnamed official told delegates that Tanweer argued with a cashier that he had been short changed, after stopping off at a petrol station on his way to the intended target in London.
The official told the seminar held in Preston, Lancashire two weeks ago: "This is not the behaviour of a terrorist - you'd think this is normal.
"Tanweer also played a game of cricket the night before he travelled down to London - now are these the actions of someone who is going to blow themselves up the next day?
"I've seen the CCTV footage of these people. They do not appear to be on their way to commit any crime at all. The Russell Square bomber [Hasib Hussain] is actually seen going into shops and bumping into people [prior to his attack].
Source: The Independent
None of the men left suicide notes for their families, yet two of the men had very young children and pregnant wives. In May 2007, shortly after her highly questionable arrest, Hasina Patel – widow of Mohammad Sidique Khan – told SKY News that Khan had left a will and a handwritten note in which he implored her to “buy toys for the children”, which police had inexplicably held on to for two years, never stating where they had found it. Shehzad Tanweer's will revealed that the student who worked in his father's chip shop had managed to amass a £121, 000 fortune – inevitably reviving the idea that a 'mastermind' may have been involved to have financed the operation. The fact that the money was in the possession of Tanweer, still sitting in his account after his death suggests, however, that the money was not spent on anything, let alone a terror operation. Other explanations for Tanweer's apparently incongruous amount of money are explored in Hypothesis 6. In his article, London Bombings: Unasked and Unanswered questions, Fazal Rahman Ph.D contended,
Why would anyone blow himself/herself up during an attack like the London bombings, when it can be done rather easily by leaving the explosives on the trains and the bus, and disembarking without endangering oneself? The so-called “suicide bombers” in Palestine, Israel, and Iraq carry out such acts because they have very few, if any, other options in those situations. If they could carry out such actions without endangering or killing themselves, they would certainly choose that option.
Source: J7: The July 7th Truth Campaign
Clearly, half of this theory can be discredited as in Hypothesis 1. A large body of evidence suggests that there was no 'al-Qa'ida mastermind' to dupe the men or otherwise. There is no evidence that the men were 'recruited', either. Despite the fact that three men were charged in April 2007 (having been arrested coincidentally on the same day that the Crevice trial jury, which was at the time considering its verdict, did not sit) with conspiring to cause explosions along with the deceased and “others”, no others have been charged and during the trial of the three, no evidence was presented that they or the four deceased accused had ever met with anybody who could conceivably have 'masterminded' the events of July 7th 2005. Mohammed Junaid Babar, whose claims are both ambiguous and, not least due to his relationship with self-confessed liar Hassan Butt, highly dubious (as noted in Hypothesis 1), was unsurprisingly called as a witness in the 2008 trial of the three charged men. He stated that he met one of the defendants, Mohammed Shakil and Mohammad Sidique Khan in Pakistan in July 2003 where they attended a 'jihad training camp' together. However, Babar stated during this testimony that at no time did the men mention suicide bombings, concentrating instead on the problems in Afghanistan due to the invasion of Western allied forces.
The other half of this theory is less easy to challenge. There is certainly nothing to suggest in the demeanour of the men leading up to the attacks, or on the day of the attacks that they knew they were going to die. During the trial mentioned in the previous paragraph, the jury were shown home video footage of Khan with trial defendant Waheed Ali, along with Shehzad Tanweer and Hasib Hussain. The men are relaxed and happy. In more footage, recorded a month later, Khan is saying farewell to his baby daughter before leaving for the November 2004 Pakistan trip he took with Tanweer. The media portrayed this as a final goodbye, claiming Khan knew he was going to his death. However, his words in the video - “I have to do this thing for our future” - suggests there was no intent to die whatsoever and every intention to return. Strangely, a bugged conversation between Khan and Omar Khyam, later convicted in the Crevice trial, was also played to the jury, where Khyam was alleged to have said to Khan that the Pakistan trip would be a “one-way ticket”. This appears to be a reference to such trips being closely monitored, rather than a warning of likely death. However, both he and Khan came back; indeed Khan's trip took place eight months after Khyam had been arrested. This demonstrates a remarkably relaxed attitude on the part of Khan, who despite this warning, the arrest and incarceration of his associate and the fact that Babar was already making claims related to Crevice in August 2004, did not appear to be at all perturbed by the idea that he himself may be under surveillance - which, of course, he was.
With regard to the behaviour of the men on the day of the attacks, it is possible that they had steeled themselves to act 'normal' to avoid arousing suspicion. This suggestion was proposed by Paul Beaver, yet another 'terrorism expert' on Fox News on July 27th 2005, along with Alex Standish, editor of Jane's Intelligence Digest, who remarked that the men may have avoided making suicide videos or leaving notes for their families knowing that this could later implicate their loved ones. This is a point worthy of consideration – although, of course, two of the men did make videos – as mentioned in Hypothesis 1; these were handed to al-Jazeera by an unknown source. Despite the videos making no specific reference to an intent to die in London in suicide attacks, this is certainly how they were spun by the media, something which Khan appeared to acknowledge in his broadcast. The videos could realistically relate to their intent to fight with their brothers in Afghanistan, as referred to by both Mohammed Shakil and Waheed Ali during their trial.
Gavin Gatenby at PNN also pointed out a flaw in the 'dupes' scenario:
If the four men knew they were carrying bombs and believed they were going to plant them before withdrawing safely from the scene it would certainly have occurred to them that the police would afterwards be searching for four men of Islamic background and that they would be recorded on CCTV arriving at Luton, then at Kings Cross and then going their separate ways. They are hardly likely to have ignored this threat. They would certainly have traveled separately and approached the targets from different directions. They would not have blithely assumed they could meet up again at the rented car at Luton to drive home.
Source: PNN
A further explanation for the men not behaving at all in the manner either of terrorists or people about to meet their planned and imminent deaths, as acknowledged by the counter-terrorism expert in Preston, is that they were neither terrorists nor suicide bombers – see Hypothesis 8.
Note: All comments on the J7 Alternative Hypotheses articles will be added to a single comment thread. When commenting, please specify the hypothesis to which you are referring.
Alternative Hypotheses Navigation
1. al-Qa'ida mastermind recruited British Muslims as suicide bombers
2. al-Qa'ida mastermind recruited British Muslims, but duped them in so far as the latter did not know they were going to die in the explosions.
3. Homegrown and autonomous action by four British Muslims with no mastermind.
