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Personal papers found in wreckage of suspects { July 13 2005 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
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LONDON TERROR ATTACKS
4 tied to London blasts
Personal papers, videotape hint at suicide attacks
By Christine Spolar and Tom Hundley, Tribune foreign correspondents. Christine Spolar reported from London and Tom Hundley reported from Leeds
July 13, 2005
LONDON -- Police and forensic experts Tuesday searched homes and cars north of London for evidence linking four men, captured on closed-circuit TV at a downtown train station, to four coordinated bomb blasts last week on the capital's subway and a bus.
Police believe that at least three of the men, and perhaps all four, may have died in the explosions Thursday. They based that conclusion on personal papers bearing the suspects' names and other evidence found in the wreckage. The new evidence raised fears that for the first time London may have suffered suicide bombings.
Police officials would not openly discuss that possibility and offered few personal details about the suspects. They did not name the men.
Late Tuesday, British newspapers and broadcast news media, citing police sources, described the men as Britons of Pakistani descent. The youngest was 19, according to reports in Wednesday's papers.
A man was arrested Tuesday in the West Yorkshire area, about 185 miles north of London, in connection with the raids and would be transferred to Scotland Yard for questioning, officials said.
At least 52 people were killed in the explosions Thursday, and recovery operations still are going on.
Police have said they believe the attacks are linked to groups affiliated with the radical Islamic network Al Qaeda.
The homes of about 500 people in Leeds, a city of 715,000 with tightknit Arab and Pakistani communities, were cordoned off Tuesday during an intense police hunt that began at dawn and lasted into the night. Police said they had six search warrants, obtained under the British terrorism act, for the raids.
Homes of three of the four suspects were searched, police said.
In the afternoon, police evacuated a train station in Luton, 30 miles north of London, to search a car in an adjoining parking lot for possible explosives. Investigators think the four men arrived at the Luton Station early Thursday and then traveled by train to London.
The high-visibility raids prompted police to release a brief statement that provided the most detailed account yet of the investigation into the worst-ever terror attack in central London.
Peter Clarke, head of the Metropolitan Police anti-terrorist branch, said painstaking searches of the blast sites and, in particular, a review of about 2,500 closed-circuit surveillance tapes in the city provided breakthroughs.
All four at King's Cross
Video recorded on the day of the blasts showed all four men at King's Cross Station, a major train station central to the attacks, about 20 minutes before the bombings began, Clarke said. The four were carrying identical rucksacks, according to reports in the British news media.
"The investigation quite early led us to have concerns about the movements and activities of four men, three of whom came from the West Yorkshire area," Clarke said.
"We are trying to establish their movements in the run-up to last week's attacks, and specifically to establish if they all died in the explosions," he added.
Documents bearing the names of three of the four men were found near seats left in the wreckage of three explosions, Clarke said. He offered few other details except to say that some "property" linked to the individuals was found at specific blast sites.
According to Clarke, property of one suspect was found on the No. 30 bus that exploded in Tavistock Square. Property of another was found at the explosion near the Aldgate Underground Station. Property of a third man was found at bomb blasts near the Aldgate Station and near the Edgware Road Station.
Family reported man missing
Other police officials indicated that the explosions ripped apart the suspects' bodies. The recovery of documents bearing the men's names was significant evidence, but it alone would not prove the men's presence at the time of the blasts, the police officials said. The subway blasts occurred within a minute of one another at about 8:50 a.m. The bus exploded 57 minutes later.
One of the men was reported missing by his family about 10 p.m. Thursday, according to the police statement. The missing man was the one whose property was on the No. 30 bus, Clarke said.
Forensic evidence is being examined to determine if all four died in the explosions. Evidence is "very strong" that one man died in the Aldgate blast, he said. The police are awaiting the formal coroner's report on that case.
"This investigation is moving at great speed," Clarke said.
The revelations stunned Leeds. For much of the day, investigators focused on two outlying areas of the city: Beeston and Hyde Park, where working-class families, students and immigrants live. The first raid took place at 6:30 a.m. Shortly before noon, the military, including a bomb squad, ignited a controlled explosion to break into a modest brick row house in a Pakistani neighborhood.
By early evening, the center of Leeds, with its ornate and well-preserved Victorian buildings, was filled with police armed with assault rifles.
Some police officers worried about a possible backlash against Muslims, who make up 15 percent of the population in Leeds. Muslim leaders worried as well, saying the police alerted them to the raids about six hours into the operation.
"It is shocking to hear that the criminals came from Leeds. The main concern is that people understand that this is a crime committed by individuals, it is not a crime committed by the Islamic community," said Zaher Birawi, chairman of the Leeds Grand Mosque.
"This is a harmonious community," said Birawi, who added that he did not know any of the suspects. "There has never been any conflict in Leeds and we must not give anyone an opportunity to use this as an excuse to divide us."
`Harmonious' community
Greg Mulholland, who represents Hyde Park in Parliament as a member of the Liberal Democrat Party, was at a police barricade Tuesday evening distributing pizzas to residents who had been displaced by the raids and to weary police officers.
"You can see for yourself this is a genuinely harmonious, multicultural place to live," Mulholland said. "It is hard to come to terms with the idea that some of these people [the alleged suicide bombers] lived in our community, but all of the community leaders are absolutely united in our condemnation of this crime."
But Adnan al-Rikaby, an Iraqi immigrant who has lived in Britain for 14 years, said he and others feared a backlash against the Muslim community.
"I have to be honest with you, we are in a very bad situation here. We feel sorry for what happened in London. But we feel sorry for what happened in Iraq. ... So people will think we are to blame," said al-Rikaby, who owns a fast-food shop.
Muhammad Anwar, 26, an immigrant from Pakistan, said he was nervous as he watched police vans coming and going from Hyde Park.
"It's a terrible mess. Everybody is scared," he said. "We are all under threat now."
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cspolar@tribune.com
thundley@tribune.com
Copyright © 2005, Chicago Tribune
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