On May 2, 2004, an off-duty British policeman named Paul Burke accidentally discovers a militant training camp in the Lake District region of Britain while jogging through the countryside. He sees a man shouting orders to a group of about 20 men as they line up and put backpacks on. The man leading the group is an Islamic preacher named Mohammed Hamid. A surveillance team is brought in and the training is observed and videotaped. Burke sees a similar group of men training at the same spot on May 29, and a surveillance team monitors several more days of weekend training. Muktar Ibrahim, Yassin Omar, Ramzi Mohammed, and Hussain Osman—the four men who will later go on to stage the failed 21/7 London bombings (see July 21, 2005), the attempt to copycat the 7/7 London bombings (see July 7, 2005)—are among the trainees who are monitored. They are seen conducting military type maneuvers, including training with mock rifles. MI5 records another weekend of training at the same spot in August. Muktar Ibrahim, the lead 21/7 bomber, is again monitored there. Atilla Ahmet, an imam who took over from Abu Hamza al-Masri as leader of the Finsbury Park mosque after Abu Hamza was jailed for incitement to murder, also sometimes attends the training camp. All four of the 21/7 bombers attend the Finsbury Park mosque, and two of them are photographed there—Ramzi Mohammed in January 2004 and Ibrahim in August 2004. All four are also photographed with Ahmet at some point. Hamid and Ahmet hold meetings together every Friday at Hamid’s house where they encourage new recruits to attend weekend training camps in the New Forest, the Lake District, or Scotland, and paintballing sessions in Berkshire and Kent. Head trainer Hamid and head 21/7 bomber Ibrahim are close to each other and jointly operate a stall selling Islamic literature in Oxford Street in London. In October 2004, both of them are arrested following a disturbance at their stall. Ibrahim is caught after trying to run from police. Hamid resists arrest and reportedly tells police, “I’ve got a bomb and I’m going to blow you all up.” At the police station, Hamid only identifies himself as “Osama bin London,” but a fingerprint check reveals his real name and an extensive criminal record for theft and burglary. However, Ibrahim and Hamid are merely charged and then released. Ibrahim will be stopped in December at a London airport while attempting to fly to Pakistan, and he will be recognized from the training camp surveillance photos, but he will be allowed to take his flight anyway (see December 2004). He will fail to turn up for his court hearing because he is in Pakistan, where he will study bomb making at a training camp. Authorities will not come in contact with him again until after the 21/7 bombings. Hamid will remain free after the 7/7 and 21/7 bombings and will brazenly continue leading the occasional weekend training camps. A bug will finally be placed in his house in September 2005. An undercover agent will pose as a new recruit and attend the training camp in 2006. Hamid will finally be arrested later that year. Hamid, Ahmet, and a number of their associates will be convicted of criminal activity relating to the training camp in 2008. The Telegraph will later comment, “Mohammed Hamid groomed the would-be [21/7] suicide bombers under the noses of watching police [and] security services.” [Daily Telegraph, 10/17/2007; Daily Telegraph, 2/27/2008; Daily Telegraph, 2/27/2008; Guardian, 3/8/2008]
December 2004: Head ‘Copycat’ London Bomber Allowed to Travel to Pakistan Despite Being Monitored Attending Militant Training Camps
In December 2004, Muktar Ibrahim is stopped at a London airport with two associates as the three of them are attempting to fly to Pakistan. Ibrahim is the head bomber in the failed 21/7 copycat London bombings (see July 21, 2005), and was monitored by British intelligence several times between May and August 2004 taking part in a training camp in Britain run by Islamist militants. He has an extensive criminal record, including convictions for theft, indecent assault on a minor, and attempted robbery. He had been arrested in October 2004 with the man known to be running the training camps, charged with a public order offense, and then released on bail (see May 2-August 2004). He and his two companions at the airport are stopped carrying warm weather combat-style clothing, $2,000 (£990) in cash, and a medical manual in which the treatment for bullet injuries is underlined. Ibrahim’s name is recognized by security personnel and his face is matched with photos from the training camp surveillance. The three men claim to be on the way to a wedding, but they can offer no explanation for the medical manual. Remarkably, Ibrahim is allowed to take his flight to Pakistan with his two associates, even though he is due to appear in court soon to be tried for his October arrest. In Pakistan, he will attend a training camp run by al-Qaeda linked militants (see December 2004-January 2005) and then he will come back to Britain and try to blow up a subway car full of passengers in late July 2005. There appears to be no further monitoring of him after he comes back from Pakistan. Shadow Home Secretary David Davis will later complain: “[T]he ringleader of the 21/7 plot was allowed to leave the country to train at a camp in Pakistan and return to plan and attempt the attack on 21/7. This was despite the fact that he was facing criminal charges for extremism.” [Independent, 7/10/2007; Independent, 7/10/2007]
December 2004-January 2005: Bombers from 7/7 and 21/7 London Bombings Apparently Meet at Training Camp in Pakistan
Shehzad Tanweer, one of the suicide bombers in the 7/7 London bombings (see July 7, 2005), attends the same training camp in Pakistan at the same time as Muktar Ibrahim, the head bomber in the 21/7 bombings, a failed attempt to duplicate the 7/7 bombings two weeks later (see July 21, 2005). They both attend a camp in Manserah, in a remote area near the border of the disputed region of Kashmir, between December 2004 and January 2005. The camp is run by the Pakistani militant group Harkat ul-Mujahedeen. While there is no definitive proof the two men meet face to face, the strong likelihood of them interacting at the training camp suggests a link between the 7/7 and 21/7 bombers. [Independent, 7/10/2007] 7/7 bomber Mohammad Sidique Khan spends time in Pakistan with Tanweer during these months (see November 18, 2004-February 8, 2005), and he trains with an al-Qaeda operative linked to a Harkat ul-Mujahedeen splinter group. An associate named Waheed Ali will later testify he meets Khan and Tanweer at a Pakistan training camp around this time, but it is not specified if it is the Manserah camp or a different one (see July 23, 2005). [Guardian, 5/21/2008]
July 21, 2005: Repeat of ‘7/7’ Attacks Fails
Four men attempt to carry out bomb attacks to disrupt part of London’s public transport system two weeks after the July 7, 2005 London bombings (see July 7, 2005). The attempted explosions occur around midday at Shepherd’s Bush, Warren Street, and Oval stations on London Underground, and on a bus in Shoreditch. A fifth bomber dumps his device without attempting to set it off. The target are three Tube trains and a bus, as on 7/7, but the devices fail to explode properly. The men are identified as Muktar Ibrahim, 29, Yassin Omar, 26, Ramzi Mohammed, 25, and Hussain Osman, 28. [BBC, 7/11/2007] These events follow a period of high anxiety and alert for London’s citizens and emergency services alike. The four men, all originating in east Africa and arriving in Britain in the 1990s, stocked up on large quantities of hydrogen peroxide from hairdressing suppliers and used Omar’s flat in New Southgate as a bomb factory. The devices, designed to fit into rucksacks, were made of a hydrogen peroxide and chapatti flour mixture. The bombs all fail to explode properly and the four men subsequently escape. Police say that dozens of people could have been killed had the bombs detonated properly. The escape of the men sparks Britain’s largest manhunt in history. Mohammed and Ibrahim are captured a week later in west London. Omar is arrested in Birmingham, having disguised himself as a woman in a burka, while Osman is arrested in Rome and extradited to Britain. [BBC, 7/10/2007] Two days later, another bomb of similar construction is found and detonated by police in Little Wormwood Scrubs, a park. Police say that it appears that the bomb was dumped there, rather than hidden. This prompts the search for a fifth suspect. [BBC, 7/23/2005]
July 9, 2007: ’Copycat’ London Bombers Found Guilty
Four men are found guilty of plotting to bomb London’s transport network on 21 July, 2005, two weeks after the 7/7 bombings (see July 21, 2005). After a six-month trial, the jury unanimously convicts Muktar Ibrahim, Yassin Omar, Ramzi Mohammed, and Hussain Osman, of conspiracy to murder. The four are sentenced to life imprisonment, with a minimum sentence of 40 years. Evidence included thousands of hours of CCTV film, as well as a suicide note left by Mohammed for his girlfriend and two children asking them to “rejoice in happiness.” The men had also been monitored attending a militant training camp in the Lake District in 2004 (see May 2-August 2004). No verdict is reached for two other men accused of being members of the conspiracy. The men, Adel Yahya and Manfo Kwaku Asiedu, face a retrial. [BBC, 7/10/2007] Asiedu is said to have been the fifth bomber who abandoned his bomb at the last minute. He says he went along with the plot because he feared being killed by the others. Yahya is not accused of directly taking part in the attempted bombings, but is charged with assisting the others, for example by buying some of the bomb-making materials. [BBC, 7/11/2007] Shortly before the retrial is to begin, Asiedu pleads guilty and is sentenced to 33 years in prison, while Yahya pleads guilty to a lesser charge of possessing terrorist information and is sentenced to seven years in prison. [London Times, 11/5/2007; Daily Telegraph, 11/21/2007] The defendants claim that the bombs were fakes and that the plot was a protest against the war in Iraq. Prosecutor Nigel Sweeney tells the jury that the plot “had been in existence long before the events of July 7” and was not a “hastily-arranged copycat” operation. Responding to the defense, Sweeney says: “The failure of those bombs to explode owed nothing to the intention of these defendants, rather it was simply the good fortune of the traveling public that day that they were spared.” [BBC, 7/10/2007] The judge, Justice Adrian Fulford, also dismisses the suggestion that the men did not intend to cause carnage. He says, “This was a viable and a very nearly successful attempt at mass murder.” [BBC, 7/11/2007]
