Edited 30 April 2007
Franklin Freeman
copyright © the author 2006-7
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Mohammed Sidique Khan, the alleged leader of the "suicide bombers", was a children's teacher. There is a film of him in this capacity, role-playing "good and bad guys" ...
In 2004 Khan visited Parliament as the guest of Labour MP Jon Trickett, "in his capacity as a learning mentor at a Leeds school". Khan even met International Development Secretary Hilary Benn on his Westminster tour.
(ITV Teletext, 15 July 05, p.303)
The "bombers" were originally thought to have been "clean skins". But it emerged that, also in 2004, Khan was under investigation by MI5 — concerning an alleged plot to explode a truck bomb at a London nightclub. (David Leppard, "MI5 judged bomber 'no threat'", Sunday Times [UK], 17 July 2005) Shahzad Tanweer, another of the alleged bombers, was also "indirectly linked [by MI5] to an alleged plot to build a bomb in 2004". (Jason Bennetto, "Revealed: MI5 ruled London bombers were not a threat", The Independent [UK], 17 Dec. 2005)
And further,
London bomber Mohammed Sidique Khan featured in a surveillance operation by intelligence services [in 2004], a BBC investigation suggests.Khan was secretly filmed and recorded speaking to a UK-based terror suspect ["who can't be named for legal reasons", BBC Newsnight, but was on 30 April 2007 revealed as "fertilizer-bomb-plot ringleader" Omar Khyam], according to a well-placed source.
["'7 July bomber "filmed last year"", BBC News online, 25 October 2005]
On 1 September 2005 a video of Khan surfaced on al-Jazeera TV, a "suicide bomber's last message". In English, Khan spoke appreciatively of leading Qaeda figures Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Zawahiri also speaks separately on the tape.
(("London bomber: Text in full", BBC News online, 1 Sept. 05). See further in my Sept. 2005 diary, under 1 Sept. 2005. See also Abul Taher, "Al-Qaeda calls Queen an 'enemy of Islam'", Sunday Times (UK), 13 Nov. 2006.)
And on 6 July 2006 a video of Tanweer appeared. Excerpts of the "9-minute tape" were played on al-Jazeera. Tanweer, also speaking in English, was dressed like Khan and filmed against the same background. He says, "What you have seem is only the beginning". Zawahiri appears, separately, in this video too. The video was said to be produced by the same company that produced the Khan video. ((BBC News 24 report, 6 July 2006)) ... On 7 July 2006, "the entire" video, now "31 minutes long", appeared "on the internet". Tanweer's comments are similar to those of Khan. ...
On 7 July 2005 itself, Peter Power, managing director of Visor Consultants (a private firm contracted to the London Metropolitan Police) stated in a BBC interview how he had organized and conducted an anti-terror drill, on behalf of an unnamed business client. ...
POWER: At half past nine this morning we were actually running an exercise for a company of over a thousand people in London based on simultaneous bombs going off precisely at the railway stations where it happened this morning, so I still have the hairs on the back of my neck standing up right now. ...[BBC Radio Five Live Interview, 7 July 2005, quoted in Michel Chossudovsky, 7/7 Mock Terror Drill ..., Global Research, 8 Aug. 2005. Further down the article, Chossudovsky mentions former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani's presence ...]
On 5 April 2007 three were charged with involvement in the planning of the attacks.