The London bombings investigation just keeps getting more complex. NYT leads on Tuesday with a leaked report showing British intelligence had lowered the threat level to the UK in the month before the bombings, and apparently, MI5 was "looking for the wrong kind of terrorists."
Well have the British, newly hip to the crisis, begun pointing the media in the wrong direction, too, in an effort to shield the investigation from prying eyes? Interesting item Monday from DebkaFile (judge the reliability for yourself):
London Terror Inquiry Heads Secretly to the African Sahara July 18, 2005, 3:05 PM (GMT+02:00)
The British authorities have mounted a tremendous publicity effort to emphasize that Pakistan and Egypt are the central areas of interest in their investigation of the July 7 transport bombings that killed 55 Londoners. This is a diversionary tactic.
Much of the intelligence offered to the media is irrelevant to the inquiry. There is nothing that was not known to British and US intelligence from early 2004 in the fact that three of the four bombers were of Pakistan origin and some studied at medressas run by Muslim extremists linked directly to terrorism. Even the fact that they visited Pakistan last year or were in contact with Muslims in Queens, New York, does not lead to the masterminds who sent them to their deaths on July 7. Even terrorists phone or visit relatives.
As for the Egyptian biochemist Magdi Mahmoud al-Nashar from Leeds, the Egyptian security authorities who are not known for their gentle handling of al Qaeda suspects have found no ties between him, al Qaeda and the London bombers. There was seemingly nothing to find beyond the fact that he rented them his apartment after a meeting at a local mosque. Yet British detectives are in Cairo day after day waiting to be allowed to interview the scientist.
The British government is feeding the public with a daily dose of suggestive, diversionary data for two purposes. One is to stop the mouths of Tony Blair’s enemies and throw off their efforts to link the attacks to Britain’s involvement in Iraq alongside the United States. This ploy was set back Monday, July 18, when the influential Chatham House came out with a report claiming Britain had been placed at magnified risk of terror attack by its role in Iraq and cooperation in the worldwide US-led offensive against al Qaeda. This contention was fiercely contested by the British defense and foreign ministers.
The other purpose is to deflect attention from the leads followed by the inquiry to the real source of the attacks. Last Friday, July 14, DEBKA-Net-Weekly revealed that a top-secret gathering took place Wednesday, July 13, in one of the most out-of-the-way towns in the world, Nouakchott, capital of Mauritania. It was attended by linchpins of the services responsible for the war on al Qaeda, the American Central Intelligence Agency, the British domestic and foreign secret services, MI5 and MI6, and the security chiefs of Algeria, Mali, Mauritania and Niger.
Last week too, a senior British official who specializes in intelligence and terrorism Kim Howells was dispatched to Morocco. Add these moves to the earlier DEBKAfile finding that the explosives came from Serbia and it is clear that the real investigation is focused on West Africa, the Balkans and the Middle East – not Pakistan and Egypt.
The idea here is that, at least according to Debka, the real genesis of the attacks lies with al-Qaida, and with remote, Qaida-linked tribes in West Africa, who are primarily engaged in smuggling arms from Serbia through the Balkans, to Africa and then Europe, in this case the U.K. The theory goes that the West African tries' Berber dialects are useful for al-Qaida as a sort of code not well known by European, Israeli or American spy agencies. An interesting theory...
Also today, the Times of London (which has done some of the best reporting on the bombings, including breaking the Jamaican jihadi angle,) reports that Pakistani authorities say they now know who the mastermind is, and it's not the "Egyptian chemist," but rather a British-born man who met with the alleged ringleader of the "backpack bombers," Mohammad Sidique Khan, the 30-year-old schoolteacher, and perhaps on or both of the Pakistani-British bombers, in Karachi.
Debka claims to ID at least one man Sidique Khan met with in Karachi as "Osama Nazir, a member of the now outlawed militant outfit, the Jaish-e-Mohammad, which is led by Maulana Masood Azhar." Nazir, who is in Pakistani custody, claims there are 300 more Pakistani origin bombers just like the backpack four, waiting to carry out operations in the U.K. Which still leaves out the Jamaican jihadi, Germaine Lindsey, who still puzzles me to no end...
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