7/7-cctv

July 7th 2005 London Bombings

Key quotes and comments:

Extensive cctv coverage released 2009 - here

 
The original THREE cctv images released from 7th July - images
See government references to cctv in the reports analysis

Report of the Official Account of the Bombings in London on 7th July 2005

PAGE 2

03.58: A light blue Nissan Micra is caught on CCTV in Hyde Park Road, Leeds, prior to joining the M1 outside Leeds. This car was hired by Shehzad Tanweer and is believed to have been carrying Tanweer, Mohammad Sidique Khan and Hasib Hussain.

Comment: The language suggests that the authorities are still not sure the three men from Leeds were all in the Micra that was supposedly captured on cctv.

04.54: The Micra stops at Woodall Services on the M1 to fill up with petrol. Tanweer goes in to pay. He is wearing a white T-shirt, dark jacket, white tracksuit bottoms and a baseball cap. He buys snacks, quibbles with the cashier over his change, looks directly at the CCTV camera and leaves.

Comment: Tanweer is wearing black trousers in the one image of the men released purporting to show them at Luton on the morning of the 7th July.

PAGE 3

05.07: A red Fiat Brava arrives at Luton station car park. Jermaine Lindsay is alone in this car. During the 90 minutes or so before the others arrive, Lindsay gets out and walks around, enters the station, looks up at the departure board, comes out, moves the car a couple of times.

Comment: It is not made clear how this information has been ascertained.

06.49: The Micra arrives at Luton and parks next to the Brava. The 4 men get out of their respective cars, look in the boots of both, and appear to move items between them.

Comment: It is not clear where this information has been ascertained. There is almost a two hour gap which the Home Office do not account for from 04.54 to 06.49 with regard to the Micra.

PAGE 4

07.15: Lindsay, Hussain, Tanweer and Khan enter Luton station and go through the ticket barriers together.
07.21: The 4 are caught on CCTV together heading to the platform for the King’s Cross Thameslink train.
Comment: The CCTV image released is from outside Luton station and is timestamped 0721:54. see here Why would the men go through the ticket barriers and then go back out to be captured walking into Luton station at 0721:54. Apart from one somewhat dubious image there is nothing to suggest the men were even at Luton station that morning. There are no reliable witnesses on public record who saw the four men in Luton or London on the 7th.
07.40: The London King's Cross train leaves Luton station.
Comment: The 0740 train was reported as cancelled by witnesses and Thameslink employees see here
08.23: The train arrives at King’s Cross, slightly late due to a delay further up the line.
Comment: According to Thameslink the train which left Luton at 0725 arrived Kings Cross at 0823 see here
PAGE 5
08.50: CCTV images show the platform at Liverpool Street with the eastbound Circle Line train alongside seconds before it is blown up. Shehzad Tanweer is not visible, but he must have been in the second carriage from the front.
Comment: So did the cameras fail to capture him on a platform? Are they implying here that they just assumed he was on the tube? see here
Shortly before the explosion, Khan was seen fiddling with the top of the rucksack.
Comment: Presumably based on the unreliable testament of Danny Biddle who woke up from a coma four weeks after 7/7 and has made conflicting statements to the press. see here
09.00: Hussain goes back into King's Cross station through Boots and then goes into W H Smith on the station concourse and, it appears, buys a 9v battery
Comment: Still unsure of what Hussain was actually doing. Why? see here
PAGE 6
0919: A man fitting Hussain's description was seen on the lower deck earlier, fiddling repeatedly with his rucksack.
Comment: Presumably based on the unreliable testament of Richard Jones who made a number of highly conflicting statements. see here
PAGE 7
Local police officers quickly deployed to potential scenes and police Gold Command, already in place for the G8 summit, takes over operational command function leading on security and response to the incidents.
Comment: Was Gold Command in place just because of the G8? see here
PAGE 8
23.40 Police exhibits officer telephones into the investigators to say that along with many other personal items, cash and membership cards in the name of "Sidique Khan" and "Mr S Tanweer" had been found at Aldgate.
Comment: Exactly what other personal belongings? Why were Khan's docs at Aldgate, Edgware Rd and Tavistock Square ? see here
PAGE 9
At 23.59, Khan identified as the account holder for a credit card found at a second scene, Edgware Road .
Comment: Why were Khan's docs at Aldgate, Edgware Rd and Tavistock Square ? see here
The press reported later that a known extremist figure and possible mastermind left the UK shortly before the bombings. There is no evidence that this individual was involved.
Comment: Presumably Haroon Aswat, the man linked to MI6, who apparently had communications with some of the men - this is the only reference to him. see here
PAGE 10
Further information provides a possible link between Hussain and 18 Alexandra Grove.
Comment: What possible link might that be? His brother reportedly found the telephone number for the address on Hussain's mobile phone, but this is unconfirmed.
PAGE 11
14 July Property belonging to Khan found at a third scene, Tavistock Square .
Comment: Why were Khan's docs at Aldgate, Edgware Rd and Tavistock Square ? see here
DNA has identified the four at the four separate bombsites. The impact on their bodies suggests that they were close to the bombs.
Comment: Neither the police or the coroner have previously publicly confirmed the men's DNA was recovered from the bomb sites see here
3 of the men (Khan, Tanweer and Hussain) have so far been forensically linked to the suspected bomb factory at 18 Alexandra Grove.
Comment: There is no available evidence to verify that the men had access to this property.
PAGE 12
The 4 were identified together by CCTV at various points before the bombings
Comment: Why won't the authorities release anymore than ONE image of the four men? see here
PAGE 16
25.
Information about what went on in these places is mixed and incomplete. Much is hearsay. Accounts from those with more direct knowledge are conflicting. It is difficult to be sure what the facts are.
Comment: Therefore there is no reliable evidence that the gyms, bookshops were being used to radicalise or train.
There is little evidence so far that Khan, Tanweer or Hussain were big internet users at home.
Comment: So it would appear the internet did not play a significant role unlike what the 'leaks' in the press have recently reported.
PAGE 18
33.
At school, he is said to have begun associating with troublemakers and was disciplined for handing out leaflets in support of Al Qaida.
Comment: I suggest this is based on unreliable evidence due to conflicting reports. Perhaps they got mixed up with Hussain who was reported to of spread leaflets at school even though this was strongly refuted by the headmaster at Hussain's school. see here
PAGE 19
40.
Although Khan's Will also touches on these, its focus is much more on the importance of martyrdom as supreme evidence of religious commitment. It also contains anti-Semitic comments. It draws heavily on the published Will of a young British man killed during the US bombing of Tora Bora in Eastern Afghanistan in late 2001, and who was married with young children like Khan.
He appears as something of a role model to Khan.
Comment: Where is this Will then? Why won't the authorities release it to the public?
41.
As yet little material has been found directly from the others expressing their motivation. There is some evidence that Tanweer was motivated particularly by a desire for martyrdom. As described earlier, there are reports of Hussain and Lindsay expressing extreme views at school. Conspiracy theories also abounded, at least some of the bombers seem to have expressed the view that the 9/11 attacks were a plot by the US .
Comment: There is no reliable evidence to suggest Tanweer, Hussain, Lindsay were motivated to the point of violent extremism. 911 was an inside job - I suppose members of the 911 Truth Movement are all considered dangerous extremists now.
PAGE 20
44
Other evidence suggests that Khan believed he was going to Pakistan to cross the border and fight in Afghanistan .
Comment: What evidence?
45
It is possible that they went up to the border areas with Afghanistan or over the border for training but we do not have firm evidence of this.
Comment: Anything is possible.
48.
It is also believed that Khan had visited Pakistan , and possibly Afghanistan , on a few other occasions since the late 1990s but there is no confirmation and no details of these trips. There were media reports soon after the attacks that Khan had visited Malaysia and the Philippines to meet Al Qaida operatives. These stories were investigated and found to have no basis.
Comment: No evidence to support media stories of Khan's international terrorist portfolio.
49.
Tanweer and Hussain had both visited Pakistan with their families. There were reports in the media that on one of these visits Tanweer met senior members of militant groups but there is no reliable intelligence or corroborative information to support this.
Comment: Again no evidence to support the reports of training or influence received in Pakistan .
PAGE 21
51.
He claimed to others to have visited Pakistan , but there is nothing to corroborate this.
Comment: Who did he claim this to?
52.
Between April and July 2005, the group was in contact with an individual or individuals in Pakistan . It is not known who this was or the content of the contacts but the methods used, designed to make it difficult to identify the individual, make the contacts look suspicious.
Comment: Wasn't this discounted as simply being family phone calls or is this something new?
PAGE 22
58.
In May the group rented 18 Alexandra Grove from an Egyptian chemistry PhD student at Leeds University (now in Egypt ) who was himself subletting it to them.
Comment: There is no available evidence for this. As far as I am aware Magdi al-Nashar has not stated he was letting the flat to the men.
PAGE 23
59.
Expert examination continues but it appears the bombs were homemade, and that the ingredients used were all readily commercially available and not particularly expensive. Each device appears to have consisted of around 2-5 kg of home made explosive.
Comment: Contradicts many expert opinions. Why are they still unsure? see here
The first purchase of material necessary for production so far identified was on 31 March 2005 .
Comment: What was this? The perfume perhaps or the tubs?
60.
No great expertise is required to assemble a device of this kind.
Comment: Building a detonator for volatile explosive mixtures does require expertise - there is no evidence to suggest the men could have gained access to these skills. see here
60. 61.
The mixtures would have smelt bad enough to make the room very difficult to work in. Both Tanweer and Lindsay bought face masks from shops and on the internet. The signs are that the bombs were made with the windows open but the net curtains taped to the walls to avoid being seen. The fumes had killed off the tops of plants just outside the windows.
The mixtures would also have had a strong bleaching effect. Both Tanweer and Hussain's families had noticed that their hair had become lighter over the weeks before the bombing. They explained this as the effect of chlorine from swimming pools (the two men and Khan regularly swam together). There were shower caps at 18 Alexandra Grove which may have been used during the manufacturing process to try to disguise this.
Comment: Face masks? Where's the evidence for this? Surely if the chemicals were invasive enough to the point of changing the men's hair colour the police would have found traces at their homes but they never did.
PAGE 24
70.
Lindsay spent money liberally in different ways, some which now appear to be linked to the bombings for example, purchases of perfumes which he then traded on the internet for material useful for the bomb-making process, and some which look like providing for his family when he was gone - nappies, children's toys.
Comment: What material for the bomb making process?
PAGE 26
j)
In other cases, the mentor has often stood back from actual operations, to enable him to indoctrinate others in the future;
Comment: Presumably total speculation based on Khan being apparently on the periphery of alleged bomb plots.
 
It is peculiar that so few images have been released. The men would have been filmed on dozens of cameras en route to Kings Cross underground from Thameslink station. Thousands of tapes have been analysed, but we have more images of the supposed 'dummy run' than we do of 7/7. Why, if they exist, aren't the most incriminating images of the men, for example them boarding the tubes, made public? - images
A power surge occured in May 2005 on the LU which knocked out the CCTV - could this of happened on 7/7? (BBC)
According to the police all the men were caught on cctv in Kings Cross Thameslink at 0826.
The camera on the No. 30 bus was not in operation

Guardian: The CCTV camera on the number 30 bus, which blew up near Tavistock Square , had reportedly not been working for some weeks. "It is a real pity as these would have been the easiest ones from which to identify the bomber," said Dr Silke. "That is a real loss."