Home Affairs Select Committee announces 'biggest inquiry into 7/7 & terrorists incidents in Britain'

Britain's anti-terrorist police face budget cuts for the first time since the July 7 attacks, Scotland Yard's head of counter terrorism has warned.

John Yates, assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, admitted that having to make savings was "inevitable" despite the risks associated with staging the 2012 Olympic Games in London.

His warning came as the most extensive inquiry yet in to the London suicide bombings was announced by MPs, to mark the fourth anniversary of the tragedy.

The Commons Home Affairs Select Committee will call on MI5 and MI6 chiefs, as well as terrorism experts and politicians, to give evidence and explain what the security services knew before the attacks and what should have been done.

Mr Yates, who became Scotland Yard's head of specialist operations three months ago, said there had been a significant growth in funding to combat the extremist threat since 2005.

However, he added that it would be "naive" to think counter terrorism policing would escape the recession.

Police forces nationwide have been asked to make efficiency savings of seven per cent over the next two years, and they are preparing for a cut in public sector funding thereafter.

At a conference of police chiefs in Manchester yesterday, Mr Yates said: "For the first time in counter terrorism we are going to have to robustly look at where we can make savings.

"Like any part of policing you are always looking at stripping out the back office before you look at the frontline. It would be naive of me to say that is not going to be the case."

In a comprehensive spending review in 2007 of national security and counter-terrorism, the Government pledged £3.5bn until 2010-11 - covering the police, security services, Home Office and other relevant government work.

Mr Yates said: "Up to 2011 we are fine but thereafter there is a challenge.

"We have got the Olympics as well, there will be a challenge. We will want to grow against a backdrop of falling budgets."

The pressures on money will leave counter terrorism police units fighting for funding with other police departments, such as serious and organised crime.

It is also set against the backdrop of Scotland Yard asking the Home Office for more cash for the unit which protects the Royal family and VIPs.

Mr Yates said that the official terrorist threat level may soon be reduced from "severe", meaning an attack was highly likely, to "substantial", meaning an attack was a strong possibility.

But he warned against the public being "complacent" about the terrorism threat, which he said continues to "move every week".

Meanwhile, MPs announced a formal inquiry into the London suicide bombings, which killed 52 innocent people, four years after the atrocity.

It will look for any common links between the bombers and those involved in other failed plots, both past and present in the UK, and will examine the Government emergency response system - the so-called COBRA meetings.

Graham Foulkes, from Oldham, Greater Manchester, whose 22-year-old son David was killed in the Edgware Road bombing, welcomed the move.

"I see that as really positive and I think it's good news," he said. "I would like an independent inquiry, but this is a very good second."

The parliamentary Intelligence and Security Service Committee (ISC) carried out its own inquiry in to the bombings but its report in May sparked outrage when it said there was nothing MI5 could have done to stop the attacks.

The Home Affairs committee could begin its hearings as early as September but a witness list is still to be drawn up. It remains to be seen how forthcoming the security services will be in giving evidence or whether it will be held in private.

Patrick Mercer, a Tory member of the committee, said: "This will be the biggest inquiry in July 7 and terrorist incidents in Britain.

"What we are going to try is to look at the links between failed attacks before 7/7 and right the way through to the latest successful and unsuccessful attacks that have been plaguing our security services."

Keith Vaz, the Labour chairman of the committee, added: "The Committee will be inviting MI5, MI6 and terrorism experts to give evidence with the aim of gaining a detailed picture of what the security services knew before 7/7, what, if anything, could have been done to prevent the attacks and the Government's response to the attacks."

So. The campaigning is working. Another major breakthrough.

See Telegraph, Press Association, Mirror, Evening Standard, Daily Mail

It is to be an investigation by one of the most powerful parliamentary committees, who hear evidence in public, and who publish evidence sessions (unless evidence is taken in camera) It is not, of course, an independent public inquiry, as the Mirror point out today, and as I and others have said. But I really welcome all official efforts - especially public-facing ones - to understand more, learn lessons, improve communication, save lives and spare suffering in future, and importantly, see the atrocities of 7/7 in context, see their links to other plots, look at the bigger picture.

This inquiry is therefore greatly welcomed by me, and by the colleagues I have managed to speak to so far. I think its findings will greatly aid an independent public inquiry into 7/7 when one is held.

More soon.

Andy Hayman's book, 7/7 conspiracy theories and the campaign for a 7/7 inquiry

On June 20th, Andy Hayman, CBE, QPM, who was in overall charge of the Counter-terrorism Command and Special Branch at the time of the London 7/7 bombings, and was the UK's National Counter-terrorism Co-ordinator, sensationally came out in favour of an independent public inquiry, in the media as he pre-promoted his new book 'The Terrorist Hunters', serialised in the Times and the subject of a Tonight With Sir Trevor McDonald ITV primetime special.

Startlingly, Mr Hayman's memoir, which is co-written by Margaret Gilmore, previously BBC Home Affairs Correspondent and now RUSI Senior Research Fellow has just been banned from UK shops, because of an injunction by the Attorney General, which nobody is allowed to talk about.

I'm very grateful to Mr Hayman for lending powerful support to the inquiry campaign, and I hope the court hearing goes well this week. The Terrrorist Hunters is an interesting book. I'm already on page 285 (cheers, Amazon). It's a disturbing and candid account of the worrying politicisation of terrorism and policing, and powerfully evokes the chaos and confusion behind the scenes as well as covering the successes and disasters facing the police and security service.

Earlier last week, on Tuesday 30th June at 9pm, the BBC broadcast a controversial one-hour investigative documentary examining the conspiracy theories that have grown up around the 7th July Bombings in the absence of an independent public inquiry into the atrocities. The programme can be seen here on i-player. I felt quite anxious about doing an interview when I was approached about this in early 2008, and talked to friends and colleagues before I agreed to get involved with the project in a personal capacity. I recorded the interview in April 2008 because I strongly believed that it would help the 7/7 public inquiry campaign. Then the programme was held back until after a terrorism trial this year.

I am relieved to say that the documentary 'The Conspiracy Files: 7/7' finally being shown has indeed helped the inquiry campaign. Martin Bright on The Spectator website was straight out of the blocks with a column on the conspiracy theories and why we need an inquiry, and the Guardian ran a similar article on its website. (The Guardian recently ran other columns on the subject of the need for a 7/7 inquiry, and was the first to cover the rise of 7/7 conspiracy theories back in June 2006.)

Then, today the Mail on Saturday, published a fairly hysterical feature on why only a major independent inquiry will stop the wild rumours, pointing out that as well as Andy Hayman, former Scotland Yard deputy assistant commissioner Brian Paddick, and David Davis, former Tory Shadow Home Secretary - support the call for an independent investigation into the bombings. In an earlier big breakthrough for the campaign, the Daily Mail came out editorially for an independent 7/7 public inquiry in May this year. The Mirror, meanwhile first began editorially supporting a 7/7 inquiry in July 2006.

Former army officer, Patrick Mercer OBE, who is the Chair of the Home Office Sub-Committee n Counter-terrorism, has supported a full investigation into 7/7 and counter-terrorism for ages. Chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee Keith Vaz told me last summer that he favours a full investigation into the terrorism events of the terrible summer of 2005 - a position he reiterated on Newsnight only weeks ago.

To these supporters can be added long-time 7/7 inquiry supporter Nick Clegg, and the Liberal Democrat party, who support a full public inquiry, and Chris Grayling, Shadow Home Secretary, who supports an independent Judicial inquiry. Meanwhile, Baroness Pauline Neville-Jones, former Chair of the British Joint Intelligence Committee and Shadow Minister for Security has condemned the Intelligence and Security's Committee's 7/7 reports as 'not good enough'.

So I'm pretty pleased that the campaigning which is having such an effect. I'm also relieved that the BBC2 programme was as effective as I hoped it would be.

Why the focus on rebutting conspiracy theories? I, personally have been the both subject of conspiracy theories, and the target of conspiracy theorists, probably due to this blog, for over three years. Because of this strange experience I became interested in what these people believed, and I researched the conspiracy theories, their origins, dissemination and effects in some detail. As time has gone on I have become more and more concerned about the effects the 7/7 conspiracy theories are having; how they are no longer the preserve of eccentrics and cranks, but are spreading like a virus.

I first raised my concerns about 7/7 conspiracy theories to SO15 Counter-Terror command back in November 2006, following up on 4th December 2006. I contacted them via the secure website used by victims, drawing their attention to conspiracy sites which had sprung up on the internet and which made much of the lack of 7/7 CCTV images. I asked them if they could release more CCTV of the bombers, since the public had, to date, only seen 'one grainy image of the bombers entering Luton station'. I wrote,

'I have been contacted by dozens of people who read my blog over the last year and who say that they simply do not believe the official version of what happened on 7/7 because ''there is no proof that the bombers were in London ''The Government's official narrative giving a non-existent train that never ran as the one the bombers caught from Luton to Kings Cross made things worse and I have had even more people get in contact and say that there is some kind of cover up.

Checking out internet message boards, it seems these doubts are becoming widespread particularly amongst some young Muslims and these bizarre conspiracy theories are gaining in popularity. I think this increasing denial of the culpability of the bombers ( the attitude of 'there's no proof they were even there') is unhelpful for police/community relations and surely we need good intelligence and good relations to prevent future attacks?'

A senior SO15 officer responded with a detailed and entirely reasonable explanation of how 7/7 remained an active criminal investigation, and there was an investigation being conducted in support of the Coroner and that they would not want to do anything to compromise investigations. He explained that they had a large number of CCTV images, he wrote of the need to preserve evidential continuity of exhibits, 'sometimes even before they become significant as exhibits'. He explained that CCTV cannot be viewed in isolation,

'...many strands of investigation are brought together to get the greatest evidential value from the images. Images of people entering a station are worked in reverse to find the vehicles they arrived in, potential routes are traced and images viewed to see whether the vehicles can be seen in other places, and so on, to the start of a journey. Financial and general enquiries can give insight into ownership, or hiring. Forensic work is used to add or detract from other findings. Documentary, technical and witness accounts are also added to lead to a formidable account of events.

Release of CCTV imagery in isolation will show what police say it shows. It would have to be accompanied by explanation and a sequence of events, involving other strands of the enquiry to enable those viewing the images to recognise their significance. This explanation and corroboration could amount to much of the material to be used in the Coroner's court. This may lead to intense media speculation, and the Coroner's inquest being conducted in advance by our rightly vigilant, necessarily intrusive, but sometimes speculative media. It may also compromise the criminal investigation. We have to take immense care with this'

He also added, somewhat wryly.

'...with respect to 'conspiracy theories', if a person has the view that the enquiry is less than transparent, it could be difficult to change this view.

It is sobering to see the detailed analysis, conducted by persons with apparent authority, of the limited material released to the media.'

The CCTV images were later shown at the 2008 Theseus trial, R.vs. Ali, and again at the retrial in spring 2009, and subsequently released. Yet doubts, rumours and conspiracy theories remain and indeed are spreading; it seems once people start to believe there is a cover-up or deception, it is very hard to get them to change their mind or review any evidence which contradicts their belief that there powerful forces are conspiring to hide the truth.

One of the most disturbing parts of the BBC programme showed respected senior figure Dr Mohammed Naseem of Birmingham Central Mosque showing a newly-popular internet film called '7/7 Ripple Effect' to a room full of men and boys. The homemade film posits that the 7/7 bombs were not the work of Islamist extremists but instead placed under the trains by agents of the British and Israeli government, who then arranged for the execution of 4 Muslim men with rucksacks, who had been duped into believing themselves part of a terror training exercise. When Dr Naseem asked the who believed the film's message, over two thirds of the people in the room raised their hands. Dr Naseem had made 2000 copies of the film to be distributed by the mosque attendees afterwards .

How can you help to stop violent extremism and jihadi attacks, if you will not even accept it exists? A Channel 4 News survey in 2007 reported that nearly a quarter of Muslims in the UK did not believe the London bombers were responsible for the attacks and a similar number think the security services were involved. Given that many Muslims in the UK are of Pakistani heritage, and the Pakistani ISI has a long history of covertly supporting pro-Kashmiri liberation militant cells, and attributing terrorist bomb attacks to people other than those who detonated the explosives, this is perhaps not surprising. But we are not in Pakistan, and the UK security service is not the ISI.

Whilst our security service have in the past have compromised and tolerated radical Islamists and violent extremists residing in the UK , accepting the 'Covenant of Security', and despite being rightly under pressure for being tangled up in the abhorrent use of torture, they are, I believe, brave and dedicated to keeping the UK safe and the idea that they bombed UK citizens in a false flag act of terror is insupportable. I am not saying this because I am some kind of naive liberal: I am saying this because it is manifestly true.

Fortunately, denial of the reality of the London attacks being carried out by four young British men, radicalised like thousands of others by causes such as Kashmir, Iraq and Afghanistan; recruited in the UK by those on the lookout for those who simmered with a sense of resentful grievance, and takfiri religious zeal, trained in camps in the foothills of the Afghanistan-Pakistan borders, and mentored by spiritual and political emirs, frequently based outside the UK - is NOT representative of the views of most of the 2.4 million Muslims in the UK. This cannot be repeated enough. It is worth repeating stories such as how, in Luton, local Muslims recently took peaceful but determined action against a small local group of odious al Muhajiroun extremists, with three hundred marching to their preaching stall in Luton after Friday prayers and telling them to shove off.

In fact, a recent survey of UK Muslims found them to be patriotic, respectful, and extremely socially conservative. 77% said they identified 'strongly' with the UK - compared to only 50% of the general UK population.

Preying on a sense of victimhood, anger and grievance, stating that not only do all police and politicians lie but they are actively involved in nefarious plans to persecute 'people like you'. Spreading inflammatory and racist ideas in meetings, online and through passing on DVDs and tracts - that is how pretty much all extremists strive to fan hate and spread division, and some of them hope it will flare up into headline-grabbing violence.

Muslim-hating white supremacists, takfiri 'Kuf'-hating Islamists are startlingly similar in many ways. Both groups are, unsurprisingly, awash with conspiracy theorists, both contain zealots who are deeply antisemitic and racist, both contain many who take the mendacious tract 'The Protocols of the The Elders of Zion' seriously - the tract Hitler used to justify the Holocaust - and indeed, holocaust-deniers can be found in both camps. Hateful extremism can wear surprising masks, and extremists will always try to recruit the idealistic, the angry, the activists, the politically engaged and yes, the devout who are light on theological understanding of how all the world's religions deplore killing and advocate respect and love for fellow humans.

Most people do not buy into extremism, that is why it exists on the fringes. Some flirt with it, then move on. It is almost impossible to change the mind of a true bigot, zealot or hardcore conspiracy theorist. What is important is depriving them of an accepting or endorsing community who does not challenge their ideology, thus semi-legitimising it. Conspiracy theories are used to recruit, to persuade, to give cover for many different kinds of extremism. To persuade people of the righteousness of your cause you must persuade them that they are being victimised and that you are standing up for their rights. But when 'standing up for what's right' involves attacking people on the basis of their race or religion - or lack of religion - then this is dangerous and wrong.

It is far easier to gain sympathies for extremist causes when it is passed about that an all-powerful and wicked, lying government is actively oppressing white people, or Muslims, or whoever, and that innocent people are being misrepresented, abused and in the case of terrorism, set up and framed for crimes they did not commit.

I don't think many conspiracy theorists realise the damage spreading conspiracy theories does. And in many conspiracy theories, there is a small grain of truth. The government has indeed done some very bad things.

Unfair, oppressive laws, horrific and illegal practices like rendition, torture, detainment without trial, control orders, illegal wars and unpopular invasions, the cynical support of loathsome regimes with appalling human rights records, and the use of proxy groups in territorial machinations all play as mood music to extremists' propaganda, acting as a further recruiting sergeant. Wise security experts in the UK and US governments have now begun to speak out against this, but the terrible consequences of the misconceived 'war on terror' conceived by the Bush neocon idealogues continues to bear bitter fruit. And though President Obama has ordered Guantanamo and the network of 'black' prisons are to be closed, those responsible for the policies and the abuses are seeking to cover their tracks; the stink goes right to the top.

No wonder ordinary people are angry. No wonder they are suspicious. No wonder the situation is volatile. The exposure of the catastrophic greed of once-feted bankers, the public revulsion at the 'spin' and lies that led to politicised intelligence, dodgy dossiers, and flashpoints such as the hounding to death of Dr David Kelly, the horrors of war, the abuse of anti-terror laws to snoop on the innocent, the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes and its aftermath, the suspicious fervour for ID cards and other wastes of public money, the public beating of protesters leading to the death of Ian Tomlinson, and finally the corrosive damage done by the Parliamentary expenses scandal has led to a deep mistrust and resentment of those in power. In such environments, conspiracy theories find fertile ground.

There is finally to be a public inquiry into the Iraq war, despite the efforts of Tony Blair to have it in secret, and it is only right that there should be an independent inquiry into the London bombings of 7/7, as well as a Select Committee report into counter-terrorism, terrorism and radicalisation in the UK - including links with activity abroad.

If the public and government no longer trust each other, then we are in real trouble.

I hope it's even more clear that the campaign for a public inquiry is nothing to do with the 'Government did it' conspiracy theories. I hope police and politicians note that in the absence of public information, and in an atmosphere of growing mistrust, people will start to fill in the gaps. What starts as speculation can become a damaging rumour that hardens into tolerance of hateful extremism. If you truly believe that the government has such contempt for voters that it will murder its own citizens, if you tie that into a narrative of a racist war waged on people like you, then where do you go with that belief? What do you do next? What does it make you become?

There are people who say that conspiracy theories are foolish but harmless, there are people who passionately want to believe them, but protest that they are not racists, extremists antisemites or bigots, only asking reasonable questions. There are people who say that giving the conspiracy theorists attention is counter-productive. There are people who will say that there is no point having an inquiry into 7/7 or the Iraq war, it will be a whitewash, or a waste of money, or both; some will say that there is no point listening to politicians, or police, or anyone in power - no point asking questions, no point listening to answers. They say you hear only excuses and lies.

Well. In the end you can only do what you believe to be right. I think that having inquiries into Iraq and 7/7 is both necessary and overdue. I believe there needs to be greater accountability, scrutiny and transparency, combined with a cool-headed investigation into the roots of terrorism. I say that party politics and personal ambition should stay as far away from counter-terrorism policy-making and operational decision-making as possible. I know that the effects of a breakdown of trust between people and power are dangerous and divisive. I want liberty to be protected, and the rule of law respected and Parliament reformed, and real truth, not 'truther' speculation fostered, whilst lies and propaganda are challenged and debunked.

And if people care about these things, and speak about them, then I believe we are better off than if we just give up and embrace resentment and cynicism.

I hope so, anyway. I always hope.

UPDATE: Thirty two people are being questioned after a network of suspected extremists with access to 300 weapons and 80 bombs has been uncovered by counter-terrorism police, in England's largest seizure of a suspected terrorist arsenal, reports the Sunday Times today. Rocket launchers, grenades, pipe bombs and dozens of firearms have been recovered in raids on over 20 properties. Police are investigating links to arrests in Europe, New Zealand and Australia. Recently two men were charged with offences against the Terrorism Act following the discovery of an alleged plot involving ricin. They were linked with the thuggish, barking, deeply unpopular and pitifully small extreme-right white-supremacist organisations, Aryan Strike Force (ASF) and Racial Volunteer Force ( RVF). I'm not putting up links here, but a quick browse of their internet activity will find paranoid militant extremist ideology, lashings of Islamophobia, homophobia and antisemitism - and oh yes - extreme conspiracy theorising galore. *Sigh*

The police are investigating whether this latest lot of arrested suspects were planning a bombing campaign against mosques. Would this disturbing story have had more coverage if the alleged arms-stashing haters were extremist al Muhajiroun types instead of white supremacists?

Possibly. Probably, in fact. Yet it's all equally odious. It would be good if it was generally accepted that extremists like Anjem Choudary are no more representative of all Muslims than extremist like Nick Griffin are representative of all white people. It would be good if far-right terror plots and criminal extremists were routinely given the same sort of coverage as Islamist terror plots and criminal extremists.

It would also be good if the startling similarities between the ideologies of both were pointed out, too. Oh well, I'll keep mentioning it.

A sorry show

There is still a very great deal I could say about the ISC report, which was published last month. As there's legal proceedings going on, however, I'm not going to go into great detail on this blog, not yet, as I don't see why I should publish everything I now know and thus help the other side. Suffice to say this has not gone away, nor will it, and there will be more soon, so wait and see.

However, I needed a bit of a break from writing and campaigning publicly, and I wanted to concentrate on my day job, and in any case, the crisis engulfing this threadbare, exhausted administration means anything I attempt to say now will be entirely drowned out by the tiresomely unedifying spectacle of the Cabinet and Parliamentary Labour party imploding in a frenzy of private plotting and paranoia, whilst publicly mouthing meaningless platitudes as people wonder what the hell to do next.

It is infuriating how this pathetic soap opera has buried so many more important things. Here is a personal example. The 3.00pm press conference the 7/7 Inquiry Campaign Group held on the day of the report's publication was almost wrecked by the resignation of the Speaker, half an hour before it started. A message had been passed to me at lunchtime via the Cabinet Office, did those of us who had come to read the report want to go and have a meeting with Jacqui Smith that afternoon? She would clear time in her diary for us, that day, though she was presenting a policing bill. The message was greeted with suspicion by the group of people directly impacted by the bombings whom I was with. I called Ms. Smith's PPS back: was she going to announce an inquiry? No. So what was the point? We needed time to read the report properly, and to consult with lawyers and the wider group at large, and I was not sure that Ms. Smith would be in her job in a few weeks, and sure enough, now she has gone.

We went ahead with the press conference and interviews that had been scheduled. All that work - two years of work done in my spare time, all those meetings, all those late nights, weekends, time booked off work to prepare for that day, but because of the petty greed of dozens of politicians of all parties over months, no, years, the expenses scandal had suddenly reached the point where it became a perfect media storm, and important questions about how safe the country was as a result of foreign and domestic policy decisions, how effective the police and security services are, whether the truth was being told to the public in the war on terror, were swept aside in an orgy of sanctimonious point-scoring to save political skins. Afterwards I was shattered and depressed. What was the point of engaging with these people?

And so it has continued, relentlessly, ever since,'Westminster in disarray, in meltdown, in crisis'. Every day, the headlines go on, the airwaves fill up. On and on and on. Nobody has died. Nobody is about to become homeless or bankrupt as a result of the wheels coming off the Westminster machine. It is not a life-and-death crisis, like the crisis in the overstretched probation service and overcrowded prison service that let two killers free to torture and stab two innocent French students to death; it is not a crisis like the one afflicting thousands of children brutalised at home and not rescued by the overstretched social services agencies. The country is in a severe and horrible recession, people are losing their jobs, their houses, students graduating this summer face bleak prospects, draconian public services cuts are looming, the country has no money, a flu pandemic this autumn if it happens could be a far more catastrophic threat than any terrorist attack, our armed forces fight a dangerous, bloody war, and yet all people can read about is bath plugs and duck houses and flipping second homes. Righteous anger is healthier than this sullen corrosive cynicism that is now endemic wherever you turn. When people hate all politicians, turn their faces to the wall and will not vote, then we are in deep trouble. If the number of people bothering to vote has dwindled to pathetic levels, if extremist parties manage to get seats, then I will start to despair. Because this is fiddling whilst Rome burns.

It looks as if many of those in the Houses of Commons and the House of Lords no longer care about doing their jobs and serving the public, only about protecting their jobs and clinging to power. Thus our democracy sickens and withers. And yet, I know that there are still good men and women who are public servants, working in local and national politics. I have met some of them.

I actually pity them, these days.

It is indescribably depressing and frustrating to watch the buckets of ordure being wielded and to read of the thousands of back-stabbing cuts, none of them the coup de grace that would bring down the curtain. 'Politics' has become a tainted word, 'politician a term' of abuse. Months of stories laying bare the petty venalities of MPs' and Lords' expenses, the unimaginable sums of public money handed out to larcenous bankers and their failed financial institutions, and now the endless speculation about when, who, how the fatal blow will be struck against a wounded Prime Minister who seems to think he is tied to a stake and cannot fly, but bear-like, must stay the course, whatever the cost to him, to his party, to his country. Watching this play out makes you want to call the League Against Cruel Sports, or perhaps the Priory, where those burned and twisting in the merciless glare of public scrutiny go to close the door, and weep into a pillow, and try to remember who they really are, why they ever wanted this in the first place.

Have you heard the lively hum of the democracy machine in action these last few years? No, only the soft rustle of nests being feather-bedded, the rumbling of plots, the sharpening of knives and the scraping and creaking of furniture being pointlessly rearranged inside the Mother of Parliaments that has become a bunker to hide from the real world. For shame, as veterans stand at the graves of comrades this D-day, that this petty and impotent self-obsessed politics, this sorry show, this shabby shower is what passes for government. For shame.

But, to go back to where I started, this wretched government has let us down, badly, but there is hope yet for the 7/7 Inquiry campaign at least. The Shadow Home Secretary, Chris Grayling, has now said he will back a judicial inquiry. The Shadow Security Minister, Pauline Neville Jones has pointed out the report's shortcomings. The Mail called for an inquiry. So has RUSI. The Liberal Democrats have called for a full public inquiry. We will get there, though I think it will take a general election first. It's sad, I've tried for 4 years with Labour, but they will not, cannot allow an inquiry, it seems. The other parties are far more receptive.

Well, so be it. What else can be done? What else is fair, and just, and right, and honourable? Let the public decide. Tonight's Euro-results will be a clue.

The 2nd ISC report is out - and here's the questions they're unlikely to answer

Back in 2007, you may remember, there was a major terrorist trial into several men who had been under surveillance as they planned to make a huge fertiliser bomb and kill civilians in the UK - probably 'slags dancing around' in the Ministry of Sound and shoppers in Bluewater. 'Operation Crevice', it was called. It was a major police and security service success and well done to them for it.

The plotters were a bunch of UK Al Qaeda-inspired operatives, born and bred in the UK. They were not 'clean skins', they were known to the security service. They were filmed, photographed, bugged and followed in 2003 and 2004 as they talked about jihad, their fraudulent schemes to fund the mujahadeen and jihadis on the 'front line' fighting allied troops in Afhganistan, Kashmir and Pakistan. They shared a takfiri hatred of the 'filthy kaffr' - they believed, (just like the U.S President at the time), that 'either you were with us or against us' - either you were right, on God's side - or you were wrong. Those who were wrong, they agreed, deserved to die.

Some of them had already travelled to Pakistan in the years before their planned attack, to deliver money and equipment donated by other true believers, and some of them desired nothing more than to offer themselves up in the fight to free the world's suffering Muslims by putting their own bodies in the firing line

Some of them had trained together in a camp in the mountains of Malakand, on the Pakistan/ Afghanistan border, where they had trained with weapons and mixed explosives to recipes they had been taught in specialist camps. Later, some of them had stayed together in a house in Lahore, 13 Ilyas Street, where the neighbours had complained to the police of young English men, playing with explosives in the garden, careless, heedless, dangerous.

Some of them had been sent to Pakistan by a man known as ''Q''.
Q was known to the security services as early as 2003. Q was a member of al-Muhajiroun, a radical organisation dedicated to creating an Islamic Sharia State all over the world, by fighting if necessary, to free Muslims and make right the world under God.MSK met Q, the original target, with the main target, Omar Khyam. M15 watched this.

Most of these men were caught, and charged in April 2004; many of their friends were also caught later and charged with offences covering planned murder, mayhem, bombing, inciting hatred and other terrorist acts .

But Mohammed Siddique Khan, who moved amongst them, who knew them and loved them, and had been part of the network since 2003 or earlier, was never caught - and on 7/7/2005,with three accomplices, he went on to murder 52 people, and maim and injure 800 more. Even though he was filmed and photographed by UK security services, taped and followed with his terrorist friends in 2004, even though he had attended the same specialist terror ops camps with them in 2003, knew the same people, went to the same meetings, went in for the same criminal fraudulent behaviour, met the specialist detonator maker Momin Khwaljah who only came to the UK for a few short days, even though he should have been flagging code red , because he was behaving just like his friend, the UK security services main target -

- he was not stopped.

Ordinary, boring police work could probably have stopped him. M15 watch and wait, and evaluate; they cannot stop everyone they are interested in. But the would-be murderer Khan - if an ordinary copper had been tipped off by the security services about his GBP20k fraud, back in spring 2005, that might well have been enough to get in his face and disrupt him, stop him mixing the chemicals in his bathtub that tore apart so many lives in the summer of 2005. We'll never know.

In November 2004 he went back to Pakistan, after saying goodbye to his baby daughter. A few days after arrival in Pakistan he had been given new orders; along with his friend Mutkar Said Ibrahim, who attacked on 21/7/2005 using the same M.O and same recipe, a fortnight after Khan detonated a hydrogen peroxide organic compound based IED on the tube. Again, he too was not stopped.

Ibrahim's bomb failed to detonate: perhaps he had not been paying as much attention as his friends to the lessons that were given the UK jihadi class of 2003-2004 that last winter before they set off back to the UK to die.

There is much more I could tell you. There is not space nor time today.

At 8.30am today I will be locked in, with some of the other survivors and families impacted by 7/7, looking at the second Intelligence and Security Committee Report, which was commissioned in May 2007 after public outcry after a trial revealed what had been hidden; the links between the 7/7 bombers and a wider terror network. The families and survivors 7/7 Inquiry Campaign group that I am part of did not ask for this second report: we asked for an inquiry independent of Government and security services and police with the power to compel witnesses and cross examine them and make recommendations; we have asked for this for almost 4 years. This we were not given. We told the Home Secretary we did not think the ISC were equivalent to an inquiry. The ISC meet in secret. They do not have an independent investigator any more. They did not find out much about the 7/7 bombers in their first report, published in May 2006. Why, how could we trust them to go over it again, now that public outcry after public trials had found their first findings false?

In October 2007 we had a meeting with them. We asked if we could ask them questions.

When they said yes, we said we'd submit them in writing.

On the eve of the report's publication, for the first time - here they are.

I really hope they try to answer them this time, I can't understand why they didn't do it first time around.Briefing, briefing...they spin, we fight back. The ISC's is having a press conference at 11.30am.Our press conference is at 3pm, 54 Doughty St Chambers. I've taken the day off work; this is going to be a long day.

CIF:'To understand 7/7 we need an official account'

It's good to see the issue of an independent inquiry into 7/7 getting support from across the board. On Newsnight, Keith Vaz seemed to be suggesting a Home Affairs Select Committee might consider looking at the matter. The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have both come out in support of an inquiry, with, for example, Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling is known to support a judicial inquiry. The subject was the subject of debate on TALKSPORT radio last night. Jonathan Githens-Mazer is a senior lecturer in politics at the University of Exeter, and is conducting research on political mobilisation amongst British Muslims. In today's Guardian Comment is Free, he writes

'All of this raises the question: is the lack of a public enquiry into 7/7 about the power to control policy agendas, being uncomfortable about the domestic effects of foreign policy, or both? The lack of an enquiry means it is impossible to challenge any government position, because no interpretation of the attacks can be supported in the absence of a full official account, and there is no official account to derive adapted policy responses.

But holding a public enquiry into 7/7 is more than about good governance: in the absence of a rigorous evidence based examination of 7/7, public debate and commentary always breaks down into ad nauseam political sectarianism and point-scoring – take your pick from it's the fault of a) religion, b) ideology, c) foreign policy, d) the intelligence services, e) psychological vulnerability, f) social factors, g) ethnic background etc. This means that we have little ability beyond the anecdotal to support or dismiss arguments such as that put forward recently on Comment is free by Tahir Abbas, that social forces can contribute to terrorist attacks. And this is more than an academic debate: for Muslim communities themselves, the lack of a public enquiry has served to fuel conspiracy theories, often variations on the themes of false evidence (for example, the invalidity of CCTV evidence of the 7/7 bombers at Luton railway station) and a hidden State hand (for example, a covert US or Israeli action).

So the lack of an enquiry on 7/7 cuts many ways. It means that we are no closer to a meaningful and demonstrable understanding of how and why this terrible incident happened, it prevents a publicly-sanctioned and audited learning process for counter-terrorist best practice, and it fuels conspiracy theories and ideological (often sectarian) accounts of why it happened because fact and knowledge are being replaced with guesswork, speculation and emotion'

UPDATE: from a CIF commenter - a much fuller transcript than I've seen before of MSK and Tanweer in conversation with their terrorist friend Omar Khyam. Worth reading and asking yourself, if I saw this, would I think these men talking to Khyam were worthy of identification, listing as terrorists and investigation? Or does it seem reasonable to belive that they were petty fraudsters only?

7/7 CCTV has been released

After a three year Freedom of Information battle, the Press Association has got hold of the CCTV referred to in the 2006 Report of the Official Account of the Bombings in London on 7th July 2005, which slim 38-page publication, authored by an anonymous civil servant, along with the 45 page utterly discredited ISC report released on the same day three years ago is all the government has so far produced to explain what happened and how it occurred.

The Information Commissioner wrote in his judgement

57. The 7 July 2005 attacks have been the subject of conspiracy theories and the official account of the attacks has also been questioned in other ways. Such questioning of what have been presented as the facts of the events of 7 July 2005 established through the investigation carried out by the public authority, is not in the public interest. Further this is more likely to occur in a situation where there is a perceived lack of transparency about how the official account was formed. That disclosure would presumably support the official account of the time line and basic facts of the attacks and reduce any perceived lack of transparency about how this account was formed, along with removing any suspicion of ‘spin’ or ‘cover up’, is a valid public interest factor in favour of disclosure.

You can read the full judgement here. The police finally got around to releasing it at going-home-time on the Friday of a bank holiday weekend, but at least it's out; whether it will stop the wild conspiracy theories I don't know, I think the horse has well and truly bolted on that one, with all the attendant damage done.

I keep thinking that I should get round to doing a post going through all the conspiracy theories
(such as 'there is no CCTV of the bombers in London - doh!) and explaining they are wrong, but it will only attract all the nutters to my blog, and what's the point?

Some of the footage and stills can be seen here, on the Mail website. The footage shows

0454 Shehzad Tanweer at Woodall Services on the M1, buying snacks, arguing over his change and looking straight at the camera;

0507 Jermaine Lindsay arriving at Luton railway station, waiting for 90 minutes and examining departure board;

0649 All four bombers putting on 'large and full' rucksacks outside Luton station;

0826 All four bombers at King's Cross, hugging on the concourse close to the Thameslink platform, heading towards the Underground;

0855 Hussain walking out of King's Cross on to Euston Road, demeanour appearing 'relaxed' and trying to make a call on mobile phone;

0900 Hussain back in King's Cross, walking through Boots into WH Smith on station concourse, and buying a 9-volt battery;

0906 Hussain going into McDonald's on Euston Road, leaving 10 minutes later.

You can see the links at http://www.met.police.uk/pressbureau/theseus-foi/

I don't know how long they will be up there. I wonder if any of the wack-jobs who have ranted on for three years about how 'there is no CCTV and 7/7 was an inside job' will apologise and admit they were wrong? I'm not holding my breath.

Sean O'Neill, Crime and Security Editor for the Times has a piece out today about the families wait for inquests and the continuing delay in publication of the ISC report which we are waiting for, and have paused our judicial review proceedings into the legality of the government's refusal to have an independent inquiry into the mass-murder of 52 people. It's also covered in the Guardian

He has also put up some thoughts on his excellent new crime blog. 'Time for the Whitehall foot-dragging to stop' Further stories will no doubt follow in due course.

It's been a hellishly busy week, juggling all the media stuff and my day job, and I have been helped magnificently by Oury Clark Solicitors, who have not only been acting for the 7/7 Inquiry campaign group pro bono, but have been also sending out press releases and spending hours on the phone helping, and thanks also to the wonderful Graham, Rob, Janine, Jacqui, and all the other members of the 7/7 Inquiry Campaign Group who have been talking to the media as well and putting across the message and lending support. To everyone who has emailed me and not had a reply yet, big apologies - I'll be catching up over the weekend.

Here is a selection of news coverage of the week's events where we got our message across
The Standard
The BBC ( whole section of website)
The Guardian ( front page). Whole section here
The Times (front page)
The Times - 7/7 could have been prevented
The Herald - Inquiry Needed. More here
The Scotsman
The Standard
The Mail
The Express
The Financial Times
The Independent and comment piece by Rob
The Telegraph
There's lots more if you go and look on Google news

Thank God I've got three days off - I've worked through the last 15 days straight on all the campaigning stuff. This weekend I WILL get out and look for wild bluebells and I WILL have an early night.

No justice, no truth...yet

The jury at Kingston Crown Court has today returned a verdict of not guilty in the retrial of three men accused of conspiring with the London bombers to cause explosions. Two of the men were found guilty of attempting to go to a terrorist training camp in Pakistan.

I respect the jury's decision, and having watched much of this trial the first time around, it was clear that this was always a circumstantial case and a hard one to build. The police have done an enormous amount of work in investigating this matter, for which they are to be congratulated and it was only during this trial that some of their work could be shown in public for the first time. I am sure many police have felt just as frustrated as I have, knowing that much of their discoveries could not be shown until this trial was over.

Chilling personal videos made by Mohammed Siddique Khan as he said goodbye to his baby daughter, in front of Tanweer and Hussein, his fellow bombers, before he set off to Pakistan. Film footage of the bombers driving in their car, then the men caught on CCTV at Luton station, teenage suicide bomber Hasib Hussein at King's Cross, entering shops, and then walking through the streets of London, on his way to catch a bus, then another bus, which he bombed, less than an hour after his three friends had set off their bombs on three tube trains. Details of the mixes used for the explosions. There is so much we now know about that day, yet so many questions remain.

52 families still wait for inquests, four years on. All of us wait for M15's watchdog, the Intelligence and Security Committee to publish their second report into 7/7 - their first one, published in May 2006 had the bombers as 'not named or listed' as terrorists likely to attack the UK, and only 'on the periphery' of another investigation, petty fraudsters, not threats to the UK. It seems that the security service thought of Mohammed Siddique and his friends as men planning to kill themselves (and presumably British troops in Afghanistan) - but not on their patch, not in the UK. If that was what they thought then, how wrong they were.

And yet from this trial, and the Operation Crevice fertiliser bomb trial in May 2007, we now know that the 7/7 bombers were very far indeed from being the 'clean skins' who 'came out of the blue' which is how they were described by the then-Home Secretary Charles Clarke (who was presumably briefed thus by the security service and police he presided over at the time).

We now know that the lead bomber, Mohammed Siddique Khan, was followed home by M15 in a car registered to his wife, to his home, where he lived, at least twice. He was filmed and photographed on several other occasions, taped talking about jihad, his plans for 'ripping the country apart economically as well', before going on a 'one-way' mission. He was bugged having meetings with terrorists weeks away from planning to detonate a huge fertiliser bomb. He was known to have committed a GBP 20,ooo fraud against Jewsons, a British company. He was no unknown: he should have been flagging code red, with his history of attending terrorist training camps, his terrorist friends, his plans for economic criminality and one-way tickets to jihadi missions. Especially as by then, it was known that UK men were training abroad and then going on suicide missions, and that some UK men, trained abroad, were returning to their homeland and planning to bomb the UK. They knew all that, the security service. The police had even undergone Operation Kratos training to kill suicide bombers on the UK's streets. So yes, whether MSK could have been arrested prior to 7/7 is painful to contemplate.

They knew who he was, I am sure of it - if I had your car registration number and followed you to your home, I could find out your name, and I am not a security service officer - they knew what he was, who his friends were - yet he was seen as a 'desirable' but not essential target and he was not arrested, though time and time again there were chances to do just that. How is it possible for M15 to say to the ISC in 2005 that he was 'not named or listed' as a threat? How it is possible for the Intelligence and Security Committee not to have known that there were tapes and footage of this man, with these Operation Crevice terrorists, known to be planning these attacks at that stage, when he had been photographed and filmed and bugged - I am looking at the film of him now, walking about in London with his terrorist friends who were later jailed for 40 years? How is it right that nine months after the second ISC report examining what should have been picked up the first time, it is still sitting in Number 10, with no word as to the date it will be released? How is it fair that four years on, the families and survivors are still waiting for answers to these terrible questions: could the bombers have been stopped? Did communication and intelligence fail? And have the lessons been learned that will stop the wrong men being arrested and the right men slipping through the cracks? The recent arrests and release of Pakistani students in Manchester and Liverpool raise worrying questions in this regard - four years after the bombings.

No, there will never be justice in the matter of the London bombings of 2005, because the four men who bombed London chose to never face a judge or jury, but to deliberately kill themselves by their own hand, on a day of their own choosing: I saw film of them going to their deaths; they looked determined, even happy as they walked, shouldering their heavy rucksacks of home-made explosive mixtures. It was devastating.

So there will never be justice, but there can be the other thing so badly wanted and needed by the victims; the truth to be told, and the best way for that to happen - for the complex picture of what was known, by whom and when, what decisions were made, such as deciding not to prioritise the men who became the 7/7 bombers as investigative targets and so on - is to have an independent inquiry.

An inquiry independent of the government and the security services and the police, with the power to compel and cross examine witnesses, go through evidence in detail, and write a report and recommendations which will be acted upon and so, we hope, save lives and spare suffering in future. This is what we have asked for, for over three years now. We have been prevented from having one because of the legal processes - the trials that have followed 7/7, as a result of which some men have been jailed for planning terror offences and others have been acquitted. Now those trials are completed, we are still waiting.

The families still wait for inquests - unsure still when they will happen and whether they will be held in secret or not - under the terms of the Coroners and Justice Bill legislation.

The survivors and families wait - along with the British public - for the ISC report, to see if this time it answers our questions about what was known about the bombers before they struck. And all of us wait, not for justice, nor for 'closure' - this is not therapy, this is thankless hard and sad work, especially today, when it is my wedding anniversary and I have cancelled the celebrations to go and talk about this yet again on the news and Newsnight - but I wait, we wait for the truth to finally be told, in the hope that, one day soon, it will.

And in being told, we hope the truth will help to prevent another summer morning of screaming and smoke and sirens, and the terrible loss of innocent travellers who never come home.

MSK on video

The BBC has a link to what was shown in court again today, the farewell video of Mohammed Siddique Khan ( MSK) to his daughter. I saw some of it when I was in court for the prosecution's opening speech.

Yesterday the court was shown police surveillance footage ( see BBC link) of MSK, Tanweer ( two of the 7/7 suicide bombers), walking in East London with a man the jury was told was a ''committed terrorist'' ( Ausman is what he is referred to in court) and Waheed Ali, one of the defendants, plus others walking about in East London. It was in colour, perfectly clear and shot in March 2004.

There is a lot I want to say about this but I can't, until the trial is over.

Meeting the ISC

See Mirror today
and today's Evening Standard

Back in October last year, the '7/7 Inquiry Group' - a group of survivors and families campaigning for an independent inquiry into the London Bombings of July 7th 2005, helped pro-bono by Oury Clark Solicitors - had a breakthrough in terms of the process of trying to get more answers to the many questions which still remain about the 7th July bombings.

Following a meeting with Jacqui Smith last autumn, we made contact with the Intelligence and Security Committee (the security services 'watchdog') and attended one of their meetings. The ISC have been sitting every month since May 2007 to re-examine the 7th July events - in particular, what was known about the bombers and whether they could have been stopped from unleashing their deadly attacks which killed 52 innocent passengers and injured nearly 800 more.

Tony Blair asked the ISC - a cross-party committee of Parliamentarians appointed by the PM - to re-investigate following a huge outcry and masses of media coverage in the wake of the 'Crevice' fertiliser-bombers trial - after it came out in court that two of the 7/7 bombers had been associating with the group of 'fertiliser bomb' terrorists when under surveillance by M15. The would-be fertiliser-bombers were thankfully prevented from carrying out their attacks after an enormous police and security services operation. The 7/7 bombers, tragically, succeeded.

Some background might be helpful. The initial ISC report published by the ISC back in May 2006 completely exonerated the security services of any blame in failing to stop the bombers, even though it later found out that two of the bombers had been bugged and photographed and followed by the security services - and so were definitely known, named and on the radar - rather than being 'clean skins', who attacked 'out of the blue,' as initially claimed by the then-Home Secretary Charles Clarke.

It was in 2005 that I first found out that this 'clean skins' business was nonsense: at a survivor meeting I attended in the Home Office, a senior police officer was asked how they managed to identify the bombers so quickly. He blurted out that credit cards and other ID in the name of Mohammed Siddique Khan had been found at three of the crime scenes 'and when we ran the name through the police computer it came up that he had links to international terrorism'.

Hardly a 'clean skin' then.

So that was when we started getting annoyed and wanting more truthful answers - back in 2005.

In May 2006, two reports were published- the original ISC report about the security services and 7/7, and a Home Office Narrative, written by an anonymous civil servant. The narrative appears to contain worrying inaccuracies, including placing the bombers on a *train into London that never ran. The lack of clarity soon led to various conspiracy theories being bandied about, (*John Reid later corrected the train time in Parliament.) The conspiracy theories include unhelpful and inaccurate speculation that the bombers were never in London, or were part of a 'fake terror exercise' and frequently assert that the bombers were innocent of murdering 52 people.

Our conspiracy-theory-free campaign for an independent inquiry into 7/7 carried on, supported by the media, notably the Mirror, and by the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties, and by the Greater London Assembly, who had held their own inquiry into communication failures and the city of London's resilience to the attack.

Numerous meetings occurred with the John Reid, Home Office, Tessa Jowell and the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (which is responsible for victims of disasters), but still no inquiry.

In November 2006 we were we grateful to be offered pro-bono representation by Oury Clark Solicitors, a firm with a strong human rights reputation, and in May 2007, we went to the Home Office the day after the news had broken of the fertiliser's plotters' guilty convictions - and their association with the 7/7 bombers.

See this BBC news video report

John Reid, the Home Secretary of the moment said no to our request, reiterating Blair's old argument that the inquiry would be a' diversion of resources' .

We went back with a legal argument via Oury Clark, saying that the government had a duty to protect life and an inquiry was a necessary part of that. The Treasury solicitors responded with further legal arguments rejecting our case. So we were put into a litigation corner, and we had to issue proceedings for a judicial review, within the three month window that we had to respond. Meanwhile, Tony Blair asked the ISC to re-start their investigations.

John Reid left the Home Office later that summer. Tony Blair resigned as PM, and off we went to meet the new Home Secretary Jacqui Smith in October 2007. We stressed yet again that we didn't want to engage in litigation and were not seeking to blame people, but were just keen to get proper answers about what had happened - especially about what was known about the bombers and whether they could have been stopped.

We also said that the families were still waiting for inquests, and asked why there was such a delay. It was suggested that we asked the Director of Public Prosecutions about the delay, so we did, and he came back and said the inquests were on hold because of the forthcoming criminal trial of men alleged to have helped the bombers plan the attacks ( starting April 2008). It was also suggested that we met the ISC.

The ISC were very nice to us and invited us to attend a meeting with them, stressing that they intended to 'leave no stone unturned 'in their investigation We said we still had many questions, and we asked if we could put them to the committee in writing after the meeting. I think they thought we'd have six or seven key questions, and that they themselves would already have asked them. But we came back with 67 very detailed questions.

We still don't know when the ISC will come back with their report. Nor do we have a date for the inquests yet, though details of how loved ones died were sent in the post before Christmas last year to the families. The 7/7 alleged conspirators trial starts at the beginning of April; this is also when the government will debate and vote on the new terrorism laws, which includes a proposal that inquests in the cases of 'matters of national security' can run without a Coroner, instead having a Judge or person appointed by the Government, and without juries, and where deemed necessary, hear the facts and the evidence in secret.

(See tonight's BBC 6pm news for more on our fears about the proposed inquest legislation.)

But at least, and at last, we have finally managed to put our questions to the security services through the medium of the ISC, who we hope will ask them on our behalf, and then report back with the answers as soon as possible. Probably after the 7/7 alleged conspirators trial, although we still do not have a date for the ISC report.

It's the first time that anything like this has happened with the ISC meeting victims of a terrorism attack - it's unprecedented - and we are very grateful to them for allowing us access and to ask questions. We hope that we will hear back from them soon and that we will be a little closer to knowing more of the truth.

The Judicial Review proceedings are stayed - it hasn't gone away - but in the light of the argument that running an independent inquiry in tandem with ISC inquiry would be a problem, we and the government have agreed to hang fire from going to court whilst the ISC continue their investigations.

One of the best ways to look at the failures of the past is to look at what has changed since. New regional M15 offices, including one in West Yorkshire, the roll out of S019 and new plans for greater communication between the police and security services have all been planned or implemented since 7/7. Which tells you a quite a lot.

But it doesn't tell you the whole story, a story which we would like to be investigated publicly, independently and thoroughly by someone independent of government and the security services who can compel witnesses and review evidence.

Des Thomas, a former police officer has explained that it is possible to hold this sort of inquiry quite easily without diverting resources. When the trial of the alleged 7/7 conspirators begins next month, more information will come out. There has been a constant drip, drip of new information coming out for the last few years and it is largely because of ongoing media interest and legal processes that we have found out what we know so far.

I can't understand why anyone would think this is a good strategy - it means the story just runs and runs and that people just get more and more frustrated and think that the government/police/security services has something to hide, which is hardly helpful or productive. It allows idiotic conspiracy theories to take root, which in turn impacts on levels of public trust, which makes it harder to gather intelligence - our best weapon against extremism and terrorism. And it adds to the distress of people directly affected who understandably want closure.

Well, we shall see where we get. The campaigning continues.

What's going on with the ISC?

One of the things I notice in the wake of Peter Hain's resignation to spend more time being interviewed by the police/clearing his name, is that Paul Murphy has been re-appointed to the Cabinet to Hain's old post of Secretary of State for Wales. After being Secretary of State for Wales from 1999-2002, Mr Murphy was made Secretary of State for Northern Ireland from October 2002 to May 2005, whereupon he left Government to become Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee ( ISC), the security services watch dog.

As far as I am aware, serving members of the Cabinet are not allowed to serve on the ISC.
Incidentally, the ISC's 2007 annual report was submitted to Gordon Brown on December 4 2007* but has not yet been published.
*Hmm. I wonder if it will make a strategic appearance at the height of the debate about the Government's new anti-terror laws that are proving so unpopular?

Paul Murphy re-joining the Cabinet presumably means the ISC will have to find a new Chair.
UPDATE: 29th January - I was right. And the new Chair is Margaret Beckett


Why am I following this closely? Well, last year, you may remember a media storm at the end of a big terrorism trial, 'Operation Crevice'. News finally came out that, far from being 'clean skins' as originally described by then-Home Secretary *Charles Clarke (*who was presumably briefed to say this by M15) , two of the 7/7 bombers had been known to the security services and police.

They had been taped, followed, and generally been under surveillance, as part of a big investigation into another plot. This led to a devastating question being asked: could the 7/7 bombers have been arrested, and thus could 7/7 have been prevented?

When the Crevice trial finished and reporting restrictions finally ended, the 7/7 Inquiry group, consisting of bereaved families and survivors of the 7/7 bombings asked the Home Secretary to have an independent inquiry into the 7/7 bombings. We said we were prepared to go to court to try and get a Judicial Review into the decision not to have one if necessary.

Tony Blair predictably once again refused to have an inquiry, but presumably to quell the headlines - the story ran every day for over a week - the ISC were quickly re-tasked by Blair with going back over the matter and making a second report looking at the 7 July bombings in the light of the new evidence which came out during the Crevice trial about the extent to which the police and security services knew about some of the 7/7 bombers.

It was claimed - in fact, John Reid, the Home Secretary at the time told me personally - that the Committee's work would be ''the same as an independent inquiry'' - despite the fact that the Committee is appointed by the Prime Minister, and was effectively being asked to re-investigate its own omissions from the first report in the light of information that had subsequently come out in a public court and caused a scandal in the newspapers.

This is what Paul Murphy said on Newsnight, when interviewed by Jeremy Paxman ( emphases mine)

...as you know, the Prime Minister has asked the Committee to revisit one or two of the issues to see whether it would have made any difference to our conclusions. Personally, I don't think it will...'

(So not-pre-judging the issue at all, there! - RN)

Paxman: But it's clearly not the case, as was alleged, that the perpetrators were so-called ''clean skins''?

Murphy: Well, what was said was that they [the security services] identified people, um, after they were dead, in the sense that they knew that these two people [7/7 bombers Mohammed Siddique Khan and Shazad Tanweer] have talked to these people who were involved in the Crevice conspiracy, and we knew that, and we were, we reported that in our final report to the, er, Parliament and Prime Minister.

Paxman: But it's not true, is it, I mean, they were known beforehand and identified beforehand a year before the July 7th bombings?

Murphy: No, they weren't identified until after they were dead, they knew that they were two people...

Paxman: Yes, they were, I'm sorry, they were...

Murphy:..who were talking to the Crevice conspirators - but they didn't know their names.

Paxman: It emerged at the trial that Mohammed Siddique Khan's car was traced to him and through that, he was identified.

Murphy: The car was traced after Siddique Khan was killed. It was only then that they [the security services] knew who they were. The issue of course, was whether these people were involved in planning an attack, and they weren't, they were dealing with credit card fraud and relatively less important activity that, they certainly weren't involved in attack planning, but they knew they went to Leeds.

Paxman: Sorry, the evidence that we have is that the car was traced to him [MSK] and that he was therefore identified, over a year before the July 7th bombings.

Murphy: Well, that's not our understanding, but clearly if there is more information that has arisen as a consequence of this trial, the whole purpose of the Prime Minister asking us to have another look at it is to see whether in fact these things are the case or not.

Paxman:Mr Murphy, you've conducted an inquiry. You are the only body to whom these people [the security services] are formally accountable, and you're now being asked by the Prime Minister to carry out another inquiry, because you may have been - what? Misled?

Murphy: No, what he's asked us to do is to have a look at some issues which have arisen from the trial and of course, to which we couldn't refer in our report because it was sub judice, and to see whether we can offer some reassurance to people, that at the end of the day our conclusions remain the same as what they were a year ago.

(*cough* So definitely not massively pre-judging the issue at all then! Good grief - RN)

Paxman: Did M15 not tell you that that they had identified Mohammed Siddique Khan, and his car, over a year before the July 7th bombings?

Murphy: We knew that they had, erm, they knew about two people who were doing these things but not their names, and that the identity of these two people were discovered afterwards, but even if they were known, the issue is that, whether they would have been involved in planning a terrorist attack, and the information that they knew at the time was that they were involved in something that was peripheral, for the actual main body of the Crevice trial itself, for the Crevice case. In other words, the attacks which led, or the proposed attacks which these people were dealing with, which eventually led to them being arrested and today, sentenced, they were dealing with attack-planning. The people we were looking at were dealing with something different, although they did have contact with these Crevice planners. Now, what we've got to do is obviously look and see if there was anything further to that, I'm not convinced that there was, but we have an open mind and we have to look at any evidence that might have come from the trial.

Paxman: Well, our information is that they knew a year before the attacks who this man was, who'd been consorting with these Crevice conspirators - but let us leave that to one side. Do you conclude from your experience of your enquiry that you were misled, or should we conclude that you were somehow complicit, or the agents of M15?

Murphy: Well, certainly, neither of those things. Our job is to present an impartial, independent assessment and investigation into, in this case, the events of July 7th. We came up with a number of critical points, we came up with a number of recommendations and conclusions including, for example, the need for better co-operation between Special Branch and the security agencies, we looked at that, but in addition to that, um, we now need to look at some of the issues that arose in the trial, which of course we couldn't use during the course of our reporting. I don't think that we were misled, I, um, have no evidence to suggest that we were lied to, but I do understand the feelings of relatives of the victims of July 7th, and if we can give them any reassurance that by revisiting some areas that we now know arose from this trial, then we'll certainly do that.

Paxman: Mr Murphy, thank you

So - despite the Committee's job being to 'to present an impartial, independent assessment and investigation into, in this case, the events of July 7th' the Chairman made it quite clear before he had even started the second investigation, that the Committee was only going to look at stuff that came up during the trial ( and therefore is public domain and cannot be brushed under the carpet) - and that in any event, he didn't think his Committee's conclusions would be any different to before!

This does not sound very impartial at all to me. Nor is it the same as, or even a substitute for a proper independent inquiry.

The excuse we're given that having such an inquiry will ''divert resources'' is also looking daft given that on the one hand we are being told that the ISC are conducting a second investigation, which will presumably, involve people giving evidence and going through documents and reviewing decisions, ie. diverting resources to do so. Unless you have a tacit admission that they are not going to do a proper, thorough job, in which case, why bother at all?

In any case, why did the Committee not get all the information out of M15 the first time around? That a trial was looming was not an excuse for not mentioning all the facts to the ISC -who are the Security Services watchdog, with wide-ranging powers exceeding that of a select Committee to investigate and review whatever the security services do ( in theory. In practice, the ISC no longer has even a single independent investigator, since John Morrison was sacked for speaking out about [the lack of] WMD intelligence).

If M15 knew the two lead bombers' names because they had bugged, snapped them and traced MSK through his following him in his registered car, then why did they put it about at first that the 7/7 bombers were nameless 'clean skins' - and then later, that they were only peripheral unnamed figures at the edges of another plot, who remained unidentified until after the explosions, when it was later to become clear in public court that this was not the case at all?

Even if the ISC couldn't publish the full details of this until after the Crevice trial ended, it still doesn't excuse the fact that M15 did know this information - and should not have concealed it from the ISC, whose Chairman was still claiming the bombers' names were not known, when confronted by Jeremy Paxman explaining to him that they had been identified.

Interestingly, just before Gordon Brown became Prime Minister he announced his anti- terrorism plans which included making the ISC more accountable, and giving MPs and peers greater powers to scrutinise the work of the security and intelligence services, allowing them to cross-examine the heads of MI5 and MI6 in public, and placing the ISC on a similar basis as parliamentary select committees, which are accountable to MPs. Nothing more has been heard of these plans so far, but it looks like a tacit admission that there are problems, doesn't it?

Meanwhile, the ISC are still meant to be still working on the second report into 7/7. Their previous report famously found the security services 'not to blame' for failing to prevent the 7/7 bombings. This now looks increasingly shaky. The bombers, not the security services were to blame for the bombs, that is obvious. It is human nature that mistakes get made. It looks like mistakes were made by a harried, over-stretched security services, compounded by a lack of effective communication with Special Branch. The bombers could have been arrested before they set off their bombs, ( for credit card fraud, if nothing else) - but they weren't. Why not? An appalling tragedy then occurred and 52 people died and hundreds were injured in the worst bomb attack on UK soil since the Blitz . Let's learn from it and let's get confidence in the police and security services as high as possible, because they are our best chance of preventing future attacks. Hence the calls for an inquiry.

What is not excusable is trying to cover up mistakes, particularly when you are in a highly sensitive position involving a great deal of public trust. If M15 misled the Committee, or the ISC didn't find out the truth, then the calls for an inquiry will just carry on and on.

With the departure of the ISC Chairman, Paul Murphy, I wonder whether the second ISC report on 7/7 will be any different to the first? And I wonder whether the new Chair will be asked to preside over a different kind of ISC in future- perhaps one with at least one independent investigator? I wonder whether the new ISC Chair will also find him or herself sure of what the Committee will find before it has started investigating?

I hope not. It is crucial for any organisation to be accountable, even spooks, especially spooks - and if the ISC are pre-judging the results of investigations, and not asking the right questions, and having to go back and go through what they have been told all over again, then how are they to have our confidence in ensuring the security services are doing their job and learning from any mistakes made?

We still have many questions and we are still waiting to see if the ISC's next report will answer them. Otherwise, it'll be back to the courts for an Judicial Review to see if we can get the Government to defend why it has still not had an independent inquiry into 7/7 and why so many questions - particularly questions about what was known about the bombers and whether there was reason to arrest them before the 7 July 2005 - remain unanswered.

The Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats have joined our calls for a proper independent inquiry. It's hopeless having things coming out in dribs and drabs like this, it only encourages wild conspiracy theories and adds to the distress of survivors and families. It's not good enough.

The Coroner's inquests into the deaths of July 7th are currently postponed until after the trial of three men on conspiracy charges relating to the planning of the 7th July bombings; their trial is expected to start in April this year.

I don't suppose the ISC will get their report into 7 July out until after the trial, possibly even after the inquests - but you never know. Given the stuff that came out at the Crevice trial, why would they risk looking silly a third time by releasing another bland, incomplete report - and then having a load of potentially embarrassing contradictory stuff come out in court?

Then again, if they are confident of their ability to get the whole truth out of the security services, and fulfil their remit to be independent and investigatory, inquiring AND open-minded, they might well release the report earlier.

After all, as the Government is so fond of telling us, if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear.