INVESTIGATORS have established a firm link between al-Qaeda and the London bombers after an Islamist terrorist in jail in America identified the British man who led the murderous attacks 10 days ago.
Security officials in the United States have confirmed that self-confessed al-Qaeda member Mohammed Junaid Babar had admitted knowing Mohammed Sidique Khan, the oldest of the British bombers who killed at least 55 people.
[Khan is also thought to have been the "leader" of the group.--Jen]
Babar, who was arrested after returning from an al-Qaeda "terror summit" in Pakistan early last year, identified Khan from photographs shown to him late last week.
The revelation that an al-Qaeda member was associating with one of the London bombers long before the July 7 bus and Tube blasts reinforces the growing impression that British intelligence failed to spot obvious warning signs of an imminent attack.
Other disturbing security failures are now known to include:
• The Leeds-based bombers, far from being quiet and law-abiding, had been banned from three local mosques for as-yet undisclosed unacceptable behaviour;
• The failure of a police anti-terror operation to pick up five of 13 suspects, among them, it is claimed, Khan;
• A known al-Qaeda operative suspected of masterminding the July 7 attacks visited the United Kingdom two weeks earlier but was not placed under surveillance; and
• The Aylesbury-based bomber, Germaine Lindsay, was - according to US officials - on a "watch list" but the British lost track of him.
Babar himself is a Pakistani-American and self-confessed al-Qaeda "sleeper" agent who has already admitted to helping an earlier plot to blow up pubs, train stations and restaurants in Britain.
[...]
The global scale of the plot is also becoming clearer. British detectives have arrived in Cairo to question an Egyptian biochemist suspected of being the bombmaker.
Reports in Pakistan yesterday suggested four arrests had been made in the Osman Town neighbourhood of Faisalabad at the request of British investigators.
Now Scotland Yard is poised to send its own detectives to Manhattan to quiz Babar about his claims.
American security expert John McLaughlin, a former acting head of the CIA, said the British investigation had already demonstrated that the al-Qaeda threat was "more widespread than a few isolated guys".
[...]
The reports on Babar appear to corroborate suggestions made last week by French police that there is a link between the July 7 bombings and the attack thwarted by British police in March last year in a co-ordinated raid codenamed Operation Crevice.
Babar, 30, quickly "turned" on his former colleagues once in custody and gave authorities information about a Pakistani terror cell's plot against London discos, bars and restaurants.
During Operation Crevice police seized half a tonne of ammonium nitrate, the explosive material used in devices such as the Bali bomb, and made eight arrests in 24 different locations in England. But French authorities suggested last week that there were 13 suspects in Operation Crevice and five had escaped, possibly among them Khan, a teacher whose driving license was found near the Edware Road blast.
More details have also emerged about Lindsay, the Jamaican-born Briton thought to have carried out the Russell Square underground attack. He worshipped at the same mosque in Brixton as Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, and Zacarias Moussaoui, the "20th hijacker" named by the United States in conjunction with the attacks of September 11, 2001.
The tendrils of terror spread out from London and Leeds to Egypt, Pakistan and even the U.S...
Isn't it exhausting and infuriating that this has all been going on right beneath British (and American) noses?
If you ever needed proof that the WOT is global and that we all need to join together to fight it (and that includes the French!), the revelations about the 7/7 bombings give us all the proof we need.
It's going to be a long war because so far these Islamofascist killers are one step ahead of us and their communication and cooperation skills seem to be better than ours--This must change for us to achieve Victory!
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