July 13, 2005 Anxious mother's call led police to her bomber son By Daniel McGrory The four young men met at Luton with their rucksacks of explosive and joined commuters on a Thameslink train to King's Cross
A PHONE call from a worried mother in Leeds trying to find her missing teenage son led police to unravel the identity of the London suicide bombers. The call was one of thousands the police handled last Thursday morning. This particular call came at 10pm, more than 12 hours after the last explosion had ripped the roof off a No 30 bus in Tavistock Square. The woman caller gave the name of her son as Hasib Hussain, 19. She told how she had been unable to reach him on his mobile telephone. Hussain had left his parents' home on Wednesday evening saying only that he was visiting friends in London. The strain in Mrs Hussain's voice was obvious as she was told to describe what he was wearing the last time the family saw him. By the time of the call from Leeds, forensic teams had begun bringing the first bodies out of the bombed-out Tube trains and the bus to begin the arduous process of identifying the dead. As dusk was gathering, a masked officer on the bus was noting what each victim had been wearing. The burnt and bloodied clothes of one young man were a match of the description given by Mrs Hussain. What was clear to the scientific teams was that the injuries the teenager suffered meant that he had to have been close to the bomb. >From their expertise, the teams also knew that these were the type of injuries that a suicide bomber would sustain, including instant decapitation. Teams of police and computer specialists were already searching through hours of footage from CCTV cameras from around all the Underground stations and from buildings around Tavistock Square. They were told to look for a distinctive coloured top worn by Hussain who, senior investigators now feared, was the first suicide bomber to strike in Europe. From then on officers were told to concentrate on CCTV film taken from King's Cross station. The investigation codenamed Operation Thesis believes that Shehzad Tanweer, 22, had hired a car in Leeds and driven to Luton with the other two men to join up with the fourth man. Tanweer told the car hire company that he would return the Nissan Micra the next day. They parked the car in the station car park. The fourth, unidentified man, is believed to come from Luton, which has a sizeable Muslim population. The four suicide bombers stayed overnight in the Bedfordshire town and boarded a Thameslink train the next morning, reaching King's Cross at about 8.20am. A female passenger is understood to have told police that she saw the four men board the train. CCTV picked up Hussain amid the sea of faces hurrying to catch their trains. It was then just after 8.30am. He had a rucksack clutched in front of him. What staggered those examining the film was that surrounding him were three other young men. They were all of similar age and appeared to be of Pakistani origin. No one scurrying across the station concourse paid much attention to this group of smartly dressed young men, who were all carrying similar-sized rucksacks. For several minutes their heads were close together as they chatted. Without any elaborate farewells the four split up and went their separate ways. Police were told to check station car parks at commuter towns around the capital on Thursday evening. It was not until yesterday that bomb squad officers were sent to the 24-hour multi-storey car park that sits 50 yards from Luton station. Police will not say why it took them so long to deal with the car. One suggestion is that they wanted to be sure of all six addresses that they raided yesterday, so as not to spook others in the cell. Passengers were moved out of Luton station as the bomb squad carried out two controlled explosions. Police had no need of DNA evidence to identify the bombers as the men were all carrying personal documents. One police source said: "It is as if they wanted their identities to be known. Their names will never be forgotten." Documents from one of the group were found on both the bombed-out train at Aldgate and the one at Edgware Road. Police will not say why. Police believe that the men carried documentation identifying themselves to "send a message". A senior police source said: "These men did not have to die. They wanted to tell the British authorities that they were British and that there are a lot more like them." Property from another of the group was recovered from the Circle Line train at Aldgate. Officers would not disclose last night how the bombers paid for their rail tickets, nor who may have funded this operation. But there was enough documentation found on the bodies of three of the four to lead police to their home addresses. All were from suburbs orbiting Leeds, a city with a strong Muslim community, many of them with their family links in Pakistan. Hussain was described by friends in Leeds as a tearaway. He drank and dated British women before being sent to Pakistan to visit relations. On his return he was said to have become a devout Muslim, turning his back on his previous life. A neighbour of Tanweer last night told ITN news last night that he had spent four months in Lahore, Pakistan, and two months in Afghanistan. The neighbour, who did not want to be identified, said: "He was a good lad from a good family." Police refused to disclose last night whether the "personal property" found on the bombers included any clues as to the militant group behind this attack. There was obvious pressure on Scotland Yard and the security services immediately to mount armed raids on the men's home addresses to reassure a nervous public that they knew who was responsible for the murder of more than 50 people. Instead they waited, checking with agents in Pakistan what, if anything, was known about the four, or whether there were links with militant groups operating here. The security authorities wanted to establish how many more would-be suicide bombers were part of this cell. They were puzzled why only one of the men's families had reported a missing person and whether any relatives and friends knew the rest had travelled to London. What became quickly obvious was that neither MI5 nor MI6 knew anything about these four. They were, in the vernacular of counter- terror officers, "lilywhites". The expectation was that the cell would come from the same ethnic background and live close together. Police believe that the plan for the attack may have been originally based on planting bombs north, south, east and west, but they are still puzzled why the bus bomb went off so long after the others. One theory is that the fourth bomb did not go off as expected and the bomber was forced to leave the Underground when stations were evacuated. Speculation that this was the case was prompted by a witness on the bus who said that he saw an "agitated" young man rummaging in a rucksack. Copyright 2005 Times Newspapers Ltd. This service is provided on Times Newspapers' standard Terms and Conditions . Please read our Privacy Policy . To inquire about a licence to reproduce material from The Times, visit the Syndication website . Post message: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe : [EMAIL PROTECTED] List owner : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Homepage : http://proletar.8m.com/ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
