July 7th Alternative Hypotheses

 

What else might have happened?

Introduction

The original version of this article was first written in early 2006, with the headings of each hypothesis adapted from an even earlier incarnation. Almost immediately after the terrible event itself, rumours and accusations began to appear on the internet, inevitable comparisons were made with previous attacks such as 9/11 and the Madrid train bombs and hypotheses relating to these previous events were applied, along with others which related specifically to events of July 7th 2005. In the absence of any serious questioning from mainstream sources, the intention of this article was simply to list the various potential alternative scenarios as a record of what had been proposed and why.

The scant quantity (and quality) of information sources available at the time is reflected in the original article and nearly four years after the bombings in London of July 7th 2005, much of the information contained in the original article is out of date, no longer as relevant, or has been clarified or expounded upon to raise different questions.

Over the last couple of years, more information has been drip-fed to the public regarding background events to July 7th – such as the knowledge of the suspects which the security services possessed, other individuals implicated in the media and peripheral individuals and events. It is for this reason that the article has been updated to include all relevant information that was later made available; the headings of each hypothesis remain the same but the analyses have now been substantially rewritten and extended so that each hypothesis is evaluated, and the merits and flaws of each one discussed.

The writing of this article occurred as the trial of the three men accused of conspiring with the deceased July 7th suspects ended with the jury failing to reach a verdict. The defendants were later retried and found not guilty of the charge that they had conspired with the alleged London bombers.

J7: The July 7th Truth Campaign have often been referred to as 'Conspiracy Theorists' and the original intent behind this article was to demonstrate exactly how many suggested 'conspiracy' scenarios could have occurred to have engendered the horrific event that was the London bombings. Most of these hypotheses, if not all, do not even qualify for 'theory' status since they remain untested, unproven and with an unsatisfactory quantity of data to validate them – including what is commonly referred to as the 'official conspiracy theory', since not only is there still a paucity of evidence to prove it beyond reasonable doubt, but it is also contradicted by other 'official' information.

J7 has never promulgated any of these hypotheses above any other since the purpose to our campaign is to try and establish the facts, something we will continue to campaign for until this end is achieved and the full truth about what happened on 7th July 2005 is known.

Almost three years after this article was first written it is shameful and saddening to note that we are still no closer to a coherent, cohesive and factual account regarding how 56 people came to lose their lives in London on July 7th 2005.

Here we discuss a short sample of possible alternative hypotheses to the official conspiracy theory about how 7/7 came to be. It is by no means a complete or comprehensive list, merely a few possible alternatives for consideration. There are, of course, many other possibilities.

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Note: All comments on the J7 Alternative Hypotheses articles will be added to a single comment thread. When commenting, please specify the hypothesis to which you are referring.

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Alternative Hypotheses Navigation

1. al-Qa'ida mastermind recruited British Muslims as suicide bombers

2. al-Qa'ida mastermind recruited British Muslims, but duped them in so far as the latter did not know they were going to die in the explosions.

3. Homegrown and autonomous action by four British Muslims with no mastermind.

4. Any of the above plots could have been monitored by one or more secret 'service' (MI5, MI6, CIA, Mossad, GIA) but they let it happen on purpose in order to exploit the subsequent situation.

5. The men thought they were going to strike a blow for Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc and go to Heaven as 'martyrs' because they had been groomed and encouraged and equipped by an al-Qa'ida mastermind who was actually working for one of the State agencies or a rogue network straddling one or more of them with their own agenda.

6. The four men thought they were going to be delivering drugs or money to various locations round London, but were deceived, set up and murdered along with the others on their tubes and bus when their back packs exploded.

7. As above but the men thought they were carrying dummy 'bombs' because they were participating in an exercise testing London transport's defences against backpack bombers.

8. The four men were chosen or lured in to be patsies in a classic 'false flag operation' or frame-up by a network involved with one or more of the intelligence services.

9. The original story of a 'power surge' was correct, if one understands the term 'power surge' outside of its implied electrical context.

July 7th Alternative Hypotheses

 

8. The four men were chosen or lured in to be patsies in a classic 'false flag operation' or frame-up by a network involved with one or more of the intelligence services.

This hypothesis is grounded both in a disturbing concept of the committing of a 'terrorist attack' by the secret services of a particular nation against its own people, subsequently blamed on a specific, desired 'enemy' to justify either an invasion, 'retaliatory' attack or more more authoritarian methods of rule, and also as a consequence of the many flaws in the 'official' account of the bombs in London in 2005.

The notion of what is commonly known as 'false flag' terrorism has been exemplified throughout history. In 1931, in what became known as The Manchurian Incident, members of the Japanese Guandong Army blew up a few metres of South Manchurian Railway track near Shenyang (then known as Mukden) which was on their own territory, blamed it on Chinese saboteurs, and used the event as an excuse to seize Mukden from the Chinese. In the Gleiwitz Incident of 1939, German Gestapo operatives dressed as Polish soldiers seized a German radio station in Gleiwitz, Upper Silesia, broadcast an inflammatory message in Polish and 'planted' several convicts from a nearby concentration camp, also dressed in Polish uniforms, killed earlier with poison and gunshots, to make it look as if the attack had come from Poland. This incident, one of several which came under the umbrella of Operation Himmler, is what triggered Hitler's invasion of Poland the next day; September 1st 1939.

In more recent times, secret service operatives were found to have been involved in terrorist attacks that took place in Italy throughout and either side of the 1970s – a period generally referred to as the strategy of tension – one of the more notable of these being the Bologna Station massacre of 1980. As mentioned in Hypothesis 4, the Algerian secret service - The Département du Renseignement et de la Sécurité (DRS) – frequently infiltrated 'Islamist' groups, disguised themselves as such and committed 'terrorist attacks' during the Algerian Civil War in the 1990s.

The DRS - the Algerian secret service - systematically infiltrated insurrectionary Islamist groups such as the GIA and from 1992 onwards launched its own fake guerrilla groups, including death squads disguised as Islamists. In 1994, the DRS managed to place Jamel Zitouni, one of the Islamists it controlled, at the head of the GIA.

"It became impossible to distinguish the genuine Islamists from those controlled by the regime," says Salima Mellah, of the NGO Algeria Watch. "Each time the generals came under pressure from the international community, the terror intensified".

Source: The Guardian

There is strong evidence, as noted in the Guardian article quoted above, that the DRS was responsible for the 1995 Paris metro bombings, in which eight people died. An unedited version of the article goes on to relate how the 'mastermind' of the attack not only evaded capture but lives now in a protected area of Algiers whilst those who have been tried and imprisoned for the attack, such as Rachid Ramda – who strongly maintains his innocence to this day - were only found guilty 'by association',

So what happened to the perpetrators? While several people, mainly French from North African backgrounds,,were found guilty of ‘association with terrorism’, the masterminds of the main attack were never caught. Strangely, despite being publicly identified by the Algerian authorities as the European ringleader of the GIA, named by French investigators as the key organiser and known by them since 1993, Ali Touchent miraculously managed to evade capture and returned to Algeria where he settled, very publicly, in a highly secure police quarter of Algiers.

Source: Red Pepper

Noted in Hypothesis 5 was the proposal by the US administration in 2002 to create a group known as the Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG). The aim of the group would be to undertake covert military operations designed to provoke a 'terrorist attack' in response which would then allow the US to counter attack.

Responsibility and accountability for the P2OG would be vested in a "Special Operations Executive" in the National Security Council (NSC). The NSC would plan operations but not oversee their execution in order to avoid comparisons to past abuses, such as the Iran-Contra operations run out of the NSC by Oliver North during the Reagan administration. Under the board's proposal, NSC plans would be executed by the Pentagon or the CIA.

Source: Asia Times

Forty years previously, such an 'operation' was conceived and proposed – although it was not carried out. Operation Northwoods was set forth in a document titled “Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba (Top Secret)”. At the time, there was no justification for such intervention and the aim of operations such as Northwoods and Operation Mongoose, was that the US would create it by staging attacks which would then be blamed on Cuba. The detailed plans were listed in the Annex to Appendix to Enclosure A and included suggestions such as “We could blow up a US ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba” and,

It is possible to create an incident which will demonstrate convincingly that a Cuban aircraft has attacked and shot down a chartered civil airliner enroute from the United States to Jamaica, Guatemala, Panama or Venezuela. The destination would be chosen only to cause the flight plan route to cross Cuba. The passengers could be a group of college students off on a holiday or any grouping of persons with a common interest to support chartering a non-scheduled flight.

Source: National Archives

The documents were released under the Clinton administration of the 1990s – ironically partly in response to public interest in 'conspiracy theories' surrounding the Kennedy assassination which had been roused by the Oliver Stone film JFK. US Congress responded by allowing the public greater access to documents relating to Kennedy and his murder.

Some might dismiss such covert plans and plots to manipulate public opinion in favour of predetermined courses of actions that suit the requirements of ruling class agendas as something that no longer happens. However, a more recent example includes the stunning revelation that George Bush, with seeming support from Tony Blair, 'plotted to lure Saddam into war with fake UN plane':

The two leaders [Bush and Blair] were worried by the lack of hard evidence that Saddam Hussein had broken UN resolutions, though privately they were convinced that he had. According to the memorandum, Mr Bush said: "The US was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in UN colours. If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach."

He added: "It was also possible that a defector could be brought out who would give a public presentation about Saddam's WMD, and there was also a small possibility that Saddam would be assassinated." The memo damningly suggests the decision to invade Iraq had already been made when Mr Blair and the US President met in Washington on 31 January 2003 ­ when the British Government was still working on obtaining a second UN resolution to legitimise the conflict.

Source: The Independent

See also this Channel 4 News video report for additional information.

Europe has a similar history of covert operations, most notably Operation Gladio, which, once dismissed as a 'conspiracy theory', has now been acknowledged and confirmed. Further detail about Gladio operations in Italy, and the subsequent revelations about similar operations by NATO's secret armies in other European countries, can be found in Hypotheses 9.

Whilst on the topic of operational codenames, it is intriguing to note that the codename for the July 7th investigation is Stepford. The connotations of this word are especially interesting; the dictionary reference given for the word is an adjective, “pertaining to a person with a conforming and compliant attitude, much like a robot”. Was 'Stepford' chosen to reflect the 'drone' roles of the men set up for the operation?

In light of such facts regarding how so many states have manufactured attacks to employ as a pretext or justification for war, it is easy to see why such speculation might be applied to the catastrophic events in London. In July 2005, Mark Faulk, the author of an article titled 'London Calling' pointedly asked the salient question, “Who benefits from this?”

Tony Blair has stated, along with other terrorism experts that this bombing is linked to the beginning of the G8 Summit in Scotland – To cast a cloud over the proceedings. Of the several countries represented at the G8 Summit, only The United States, Great Britain, Japan, and Italy are over in Iraq right now. Why coincide a bombing with an event, only a few hundred miles away that has so many other countries present that are either neutral or opposed to the war? Why risk bringing in further support for the occupying forces from those countries?

The leaders of Russia, France, and Germany have since pledged their support and solidarity in the wake of the bombings. How does this help any “Islamic Militant” cause? Great Britain’s Ministry of Defense had just, days before, announced that they were going to be pulling massive numbers of troops out. Why do something to reverse that course of action? There is no benefit from executing this bombing if you happen to be a terrorist, strategic or otherwise. If you were to look at this act from a “cost/reward” perspective, it would be akin to gambling with the rent or taking your life savings to the dog track. It makes absolutely no sense.

Source: Faulking Truth

The UK government has certainly capitalised on the fear instilled by the event in London on 7th July 2005.

Tony Blair made fervent speech on the day of the attacks promising that the terrorists would “never succeed in destroying what we hold dear in this country”.  He then proceeded to set about doing exactly that, with the introduction of tougher and more draconian anti-terror legislation than could ever have been imagined at the time of the furore over the comparatively lenient 1974 measures that were considered “unprecedented in peacetime”. This is before we even consider the fact that the UK is now the most spied upon nation in the so-called 'free' world with increasing attempts to remove individual privacy – all of which are defended and justified by the government in the name of protection from terrorism. Hypotheses 9 covers some of the European precedents for acts of terrorism that were immediately ascribed to an established 'enemy of the State', yet which later turned out to be quite the opposite of the stories that the official narratives espoused.

In the UK, the police have a most appalling record for honestly identifying and securing convictions of terrorists. In numerous cases it was found that police deliberately tampered with evidence, forced confessions from suspects and withheld information that would have proven their innocence. Several major terrorist attacks in the UK have occurred for which the true perpetrators were never caught and for which innocent people were convicted instead. Notable cases include those of the Birmingham Six, the Guildford Four, the Maguire Seven, Judith Ward and Danny McNamee.

Since the authorities have yet to offer up all the evidence which would back up the Home Office report into the bombings in London, as published on May 11th 2006, it could be argued that it has no business imposing 1984-esque restrictions on the general population as a result.

In June 2007, Channel 4 News commissioned a survey of 500 British Muslims which revealed that around a quarter did not believe that the four identified suspects were responsible for the bombings – and additionally, that approximately the same number believed that the attacks had been staged by the authorities. Over half those surveyed believed that security services have fabricated evidence to convict terror suspects. Channel 4 news received a huge response from viewers, including “dozens” pointing out that it is not just Muslims who question the official narrative, prompting the reporter to reply, “This is of course true and I should have reflected the fact”.

The most notable anomalies in the 'official account' of the events of July 7th 2005 are summarised here and here on the J7 site. Many of the issues which have been elaborated on have actually generated even more questions which still await answers. One example of this is the issue of the lack of CCTV proving the suspects were at the scenes of any of the explosions, which has swelled since a host of footage of the suspects from the morning of July 7th 2005 was released in April 2008 at the trial of three men accused of conspiring with the four alleged perpetrators of the bombings. None of the CCTV released showed the suspects at the stations or locations where the blasts occurred – although it did show them at other London locations, such as King's Cross Thameslink and outside King's Cross station. Prior to this, only one still image had ever been released of all four suspects together, captured outside Luton station, some thirty miles from the scenes of the crime.

One of the reasons given for the refusal to publicly release any CCTV footage was that it could potentially prejudice future trials. Yet footage was released at the trial of three men who were “not directly involved” in the London bombings and not even accused of being in London that morning. Moreover, in April 2007, just after the three men had been charged, DAC Peter Clarke, who had headed the investigation, gave the clear suggestion that there was a probability of even more trials in the future, and indeed the charge against the three men included the words “and others”, so the revealing of the CCTV in April 2008 – which as previously mentioned fails to prove the guilt of anybody – actually makes little sense under this reasoning.

In July 2006, the government admitted the Official Report was wrong, after it had been repeatedly pointed out – notably by J7: The July 7th Truth Campaign twice in seven days in The Guardian newspaper that the train that the authorities claim had transported the suspects from Luton to King's Cross Thameslink could not have done so because that train did not run at all that morning. However, the admittance of the error raised even more contention, since John Reid blamed Scotland Yard for passing on the erroneous train time – which a spokesperson denied. The Official Report was amended a second time in August 2007 – and, once again, caused even more confusion than it had done previously.

Other notable anomalies include the identifying documents, mentioned in Hypothesis 2, which had so quickly and helpfully led the police to the suspects, that had been 'scattered around the carriages prior to the explosions' – something which would have been virtually impossible to do – and do unnoticed at that – in trains filled to crush capacity as they were that morning.

Some witness testimony that appeared to contradict the account of bombs in backpacks led to speculation that the bombs may have been planted under the trains. One of the most well known of these came from Aldgate survivor Bruce Lait, interviewed by The Cambridge Evening News just after being discharged from hospital,

"The policeman said 'mind that hole, that's where the bomb was'. The metal was pushed upwards as if the bomb was underneath the train. They seem to think the bomb was left in a bag, but I don't remember anybody being where the bomb was, or any bag," he said.

Source: Cambridge Evening News

Guardian journalist Mark Honigsbaum had interviewed survivors from the Edgware Road blast whose statements also seemed to indicate that the explosion had originated under the floor of the train.

Another anomalous detail is the apparent incongruence of the suspects taking the action they are alleged to have taken. The Official Report, when covering the early lives of the suspects, wrote, “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” which doesn't quite explain why they would then go on to carry out an act similar to one which they allegedly believed had been state sponsored.

Hasib Hussain's father and brother told of how incredible they found it to equate the boy they knew, who could not even bring himself to kill insects, with the cold blooded killer described in the media. Parents who knew Mohammad Sidique Khan through his work at Hillside school were “stunned” when told that the popular community figure was one of the bombers and those who knew Shehzad Tanweer and Jermaine Lindsay were equally shocked.

Only two of the suspects – Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer appear to have made highly questionable 'martyrdom videos', as discussed in Hypotheses 1 and 2. Why would not all those involved in the operation have made a video? Interestingly, during the 2008 trial of eight people charged with conspiring to murder and endanger life aboard aircraft, a similar video made by one of the defendants was brought into question:

A threatening video made by a terror suspect was a warning about potential future action - not a suicide message, jurors have been told.

Umar Islam made a "chilling" 15-minute video under the instruction of co-defendant Ahmed Ali days before their arrest over an alleged suicide plot to blow up transatlantic passenger jets in August 2006.

Laurence McNulty QC told Woolwich Crown Court a video made by Islam, 30, who grew up in High Wycombe, was meant for a propaganda documentary aimed at changing British foreign policy by threatening terrorism.

Source: Bucks Free Press

The ambiguous nature of the videos made by Khan and Tanweer, in which they made no specific threat related to what happened in London on July 7th 2005, could suggest they were made for the same purpose and then used later on to fill the 'back story'. Worth noting that Umar Islam's "chilling" video referred to above apparently wasn't as 'chilling' as reports suggest, or convincing either, and the jury did not convict him.

Ex-Mossad head Efraim Halevi's observation on the day of the attacks, as previously mentioned in Hypotheses 2 and 4, that the bombings were a “near-perfect execution”, along with his apparent knowledge that the explosions had been simultaneous at a time when the police initially believed they had been staggered has also been considered to lend weight to this hypothesis. Added to the reported forewarning given to Israeli finance minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as discussed in Hypothesis 4 and the fact that an Israeli security company had recently been selected by Metronet to install and maintain CCTV systems on the underground, suggested to some that not only might the Israeli security service have known in advance of the attacks but that they may have been involved in the operation.

This hypothesis can easily be combined with one or more of those listed above – and indeed Fazal Rahman Ph.D did precisely that in his article 'On the hypothesis of the article on London bombings'. Rahman proposed that the men were duped, either by being told they were delivering drugs, money, or documents to various locations around the capital – or that they were under the impression they were taking part in a counter-terrorism exercise. They were then either killed before the explosions occurred and their body parts planted later or someone followed the men on to the trains to make sure they were there before leaving the explosives near the men and leaving the train.

This hypothesis is interesting due to the early reports of a 'fifth man' seen with the suspects on video, and suggestions that even a sixth person may have been involved, after “primed bombs” were allegedly found in the boot of the Nissan Micra in which three of the men had travelled from Leeds to Luton and left parked in the station car park, which the suspects rather mystifyingly left there. A report appeared in The Times in July 2006 that a 'fifth bomber' had pulled out of participating in the operation at the last minute. This story seemed to disappear without trace and indeed the Official Report into the London bombings had denied that a fifth man – or further “bombers” were involved, stating,

There was at the time of the attacks, reports of a “5th bomber”. It was thought, because of witness statements and CCTV, that there was a “5th man” with the group travelling down from Luton. Inquiries showed the individual was a regular commuter and he was eliminated from the inquiry......There is no intelligence to indicate that there was a fifth or further bombers.

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

Oddly, though, when the cousin of Mohammad Sidique Khan's widow was arrested over a year after this in May 2007, on suspicion of having prior knowledge of the attacks, his interrogation by police included the demand “Were you the fifth bomber?”. This suggests that the police, at least, still considered that others were involved even after the Home Office had played this notion down. In consideration of Rahman's hypothesis, one possible explanation for the “lack of intelligence” given to the Home Office for the Official Report is that the 'fifth man' was in fact a security service operative involved in some way in the 'duping' of the men.

Unsurprisingly, this hypothesis is one which tends to garner an extremely negative response from critics. One of the most common rebuttals is that if such a 'conspiracy' really had taken place, it would be impossible to keep it quiet. This is not an invalid criticism – although it's worth bearing in mind this quote referring to the state conspiracy of the Iran-Contra Scandal,

Many like to brush off notions of vast conspiracies, saying how could so many people keep a secret? This affair was ongoing for five years without a peep from any participants! The Kennedy assassination was, after all, in the end, a one day event. But this went on for five years before story started coming out, and it involved thousands of participants. When people want to keep something secret, they can.

Source: Real History Archives

However, it is fair to say that as much as the official narrative for the events of July 7th 2005 has very little evidence to back it up, much less prove the case conclusively, this hypothesis is in the same position and is equally lacking in proof.

Some proponents have not helped their 'cause' by confusing even the most simple facts; bringing more obfuscation to an issue which was complex enough to start with. The film 'Terrorstorm' – made by Alex Jones - contained the claim that the bombings were carried out to affect the results of the General Election, which in fact had taken place two months prior to the attacks. Others have made films going far beyond pointing out the flaws in the official story and replacing it with an even more flawed and evidence-free narrative.

Conclusions have been drawn on the basis of false information; it was claimed that the ill-fated No.30 bus was the only bus to be diverted that morning, prompting immediate suspicion. However, J7 researchers subsequently discovered that this story is false and provably so; at least two other buses were in Tavistock Square on the morning of 7th July 2005 that do not enter Tavistock Square as part of their usual route. These buses were a number 205 directly ahead of the number 30 and a 390 ahead of the 205.

In addition, conclusions have also been drawn on the basis of highly ambivalent information. Metal being twisted upwards on the train carriage floor, as described by Bruce Lait, does not automatically prove that the explosion originated underneath the floor of the train. Since all the damaged carriages were scrapped, there is no way of gaining verification of this, unless the images of the crime scenes are released for public scrutiny.

Much of this hypothesis relies on stochastic principles rather than actual evidence. There is no explanation, for instance, regarding how the men came to be implicated in the 'plot'. Several of the hypotheses listed above suggest reasons why they might have been 'duped', but there is nothing concrete which proves any of them, how it was done and by whom. As mentioned in Hypothesis 1, 'terror pundit' John Loftus had claimed in July 2005 that Haroon Aswat, claimed by many media reports to be the 'mastermind' behind the attacks, was working for British Intelligence agency MI6 as a “double agent”. This claim was greeted with interest by many who suspect security service involvement in the London bombings; a double agent, after all, could have been the 'link' that drew the four suspects into the operation. However, as also discussed in Hypothesis 1, Loftus' claim is based on information that has easily been refuted. It is also interesting to note that a fellow trader at the market where Aswat used to sell CDs and DVDs in Johannesburg remarked, “I would not be surprised if all these claims against Aswat have been trumped up because he used to defy the authorities.”

The numerous flaws, inconsistencies, speculation and lack of evidence in the Home Office report most certainly need to be publicised which is why J7 campaigns for these to be clarified, and for all the evidence to be released. J7 do not refer to the suspects as 'bombers' for this very reason. The contention is not that the suspects are innocent because the state committed the attack instead; the contention is that the state has thus far failed to prove its own hypothesis under the tenets of its own system of law in which anyone charged or accused of a crime is held to be "innocent until proven guilty".