SNOW REPORT

via snowmails

On the trail of terror
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And that’s our top story tonight – two reports out today on the 7/7
bombings in London.

These are the first official accounts on the atrocity.

One inquiry is into the intelligence services - this finds that the
intelligence services had had some awareness of two of the bombers but
had regarded them as peripheral. That decision - says the Intelligence
and Security Committee - was 'understandable', and they also find that
the services were incredibly strapped for resources but did their
best.

The report finds no evidence that the bombing was directly linked to
al-Qaeda, although two of the bombers had previously visited Pakistan
where they received some training and came into contact with al-Qaeda
figures. The finding is that the 7/7 operation was more than likely home
grown, and there was no mystery mastermind who left the country.

The coordinated quartet of attacks which resulted in the deaths of 52
people, were plotted for less than a month, cost only a few thousand
pounds to put into effect and the agents of their detonation had only
been radicalised in the previous 18 months.

In some way the findings are more shocking than if this had been a
directly controlled and co-ordinated outside al-Qaeda attack.

But as al-Qaeda is an organism for inspiration rather than an agency of
trained bombers ready to go at specific times, this is hardly
surprising.

The implication seems to be that the educated men who carried out these
attacks had in part been alienated by British foreign policy not least
by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, although Chechnya and Bosnia also
seem to have played a role. But how they came to be radicalised to such
a murderous degree is not fully understood.

Tonight we shall be talking live with the Home Secretary about
Britain’s present state of readiness and much else.

We shall be talking to survivors, to the Muslim community and
attempting to assess the current state of threat.

See all the reports from 7/7 and its aftermath at

http://www.channel4.com/news/special-reports/london-blasts.html

One question, so far and that is Who the fuck is Haroon Rashid Aswat?