MI5 trailed 7/7 bombers for a year By Philip Johnston, Duncan Gardham and Richard Edwards http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/05/01/nplot01.xml MI5 faced new questions last night over its failure to prevent the London bombings as it emerged that two of the suicide attackers were in their sights more than a year before the atrocity. * The revelations followed the conviction <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/04/30/nfertiliser 930.xml> yesterday of five British Muslim members of an al-Qa'eda gang who plotted to blow up a nightclub, shopping centres and utilities with home-made fertiliser bombs. Waheed Mahmood, Anthony Garcia, Omar Khyam, Salahuddin Amin and Jawad Akbar, MI5 trailed 7/7 bombers for a year <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/graphics/2007/05/01/nplot01a.jpg> Guilty: Waheed Mahmood, Anthony Garcia, Omar Khyam, Salahuddin Amin and Jawad Akbar Relatives of victims of the 7/7 bombings reacted with horror to the link between the plotters jailed yesterday and the London terrorists who were described at the time as "clean skins", whose attack came "out of the blue". The jury was not told throughout the 12-month trial that the gang, based in Crawley near Gatwick airport, had been in contact with two of the London bombers, Mohammed Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer. Khan was revealed as a close associate of the leader of the fertiliser bomb cell, Omar Khyam, then one of Britain's top terror targets. Khan and Tanweer were tracked, bugged and photographed by MI5 surveillance officers during four meetings with Khyam in the final stages of his plotting. But they slipped off the radar. The intelligence services were also facing questions about how: * MI5 followed Khan to his mother-in-law's home in Dewsbury and established that it was his car in which Khyam occasionally travelled. But Khan's name was never confirmed and he was dismissed as a peripheral figure. * They failed to alert West Yorkshire Special Branch, show them his photograph or pass on his car number plate details. * Khan and Khyam both attended a terror training camp together in Pakistan two years before the 7/7 attacks on London's transport system, which killed 56 people, including the four terrorists. Their contact was a man called Mohammed Quayam Khan, known as Q, who was under surveillance by MI5 for allegedly providing funds, equipment and recruits to al-Qa'eda. Khan had been in mobile phone contact with Q. At the Old Bailey yesterday, the five Muslims were found guilty of conspiracy to cause explosions after the longest terrorist trial in the country's history. Two others were acquitted. The jury had deliberated for 27 days. Khyam, 26, was jailed for life. The judge, Sir Michael Astill, said he was "ruthless, artless and devious". The others, who also received life terms, were Algerian-born Anthony Garcia, 25, who came to Britain with his family aged five; Jawad Akbar, 23, who was bugged talking about blowing up the Ministry of Sound nightclub in London; Waheed Mahmood, 35, known as the "emir of Crawley"; and Salahuddin Amin, 31, of Luton. They will all qualify for parole within 20 years. Shujah Mahmood, 20, from Crawley, and Nabeel Hussain, 22, of Horley, Surrey, were cleared. The convictions were a triumph for MI5, which was alerted to the plot early in 2004 while monitoring links between British Muslims and al-Qa'eda leaders in Pakistan. But celebrations were tempered by renewed criticism of their failure to stop the July 7 bombings. Immediately after those attacks, the Government said the bombers were unknowns but it became clear within weeks that two had connections to the fertiliser plotters. No attempt was made to follow them up. A bus destroyed by a terrorist bomb, MI5 trailed 7/7 bombers for a year <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/graphics/2007/05/01/nplot01b.jpg> The bus destroyed by a terrorist bomb on July 7 2005 in Woburn Place MI5 was quickly diverted to another major conspiracy and did not have the manpower to return to many of the 55 "fringe players". In an unprecedented move, MI5 placed a "rumours and reality" rebuttal on its website last night. It said: "Khan and Tanweer were never identified during the fertiliser plot investigation because they were not involved in the planned attacks. Rather, they appeared as petty fraudsters in loose contact with members of the plot. There was no indication that they were involved in planning any kind of terrorist attack in the UK." But the leaked transcript of the conversation Sidique Khan had with Khyam showed they spent most of the time talking about going to Pakistan and "operations". Only two pages of a 10-page transcript refer to fraud. In the rest, Khyam tells Khan to be careful to obey his "emir" at the training camp and Khan wonders whether to say goodbye to his child. * Jonathan Evans, the director-general of MI5 who has only been in the job a fortnight, said: "My service has never been complacent. The attack on 7 July in London was a terrible event. The sense of disappointment, felt across the service, at not being able to prevent the attack (despite our efforts to prevent all such atrocities) will always be with us. "The reality is that, whilst we will continue to do everything in our power to protect the UK public, we must be honest about what can and cannot be prevented in a democratic society that values its freedoms." Last year, the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), which reports to the Prime Minister, said there was "no culpable evidence of failure" on the part of the security service. advertisement John Reid, the Home Secretary, told MPs that the ISC would now look again at the matter but he ruled out an independent investigation, saying it would divert the police and security services from the fight against terrorism. A Downing Street spokesman said: "We shouldn't jump from the fact that new evidence has now been made public to the assumption that, in some way, 7/7 could have been prevented." David Davis, the shadow home secretary, said the case for an independent inquiry was now "unanswerable". He suggested the Government "whether deliberately or not" had failed to tell the full truth about the affair. (F)AIR USE NOTICE: All original content and/or articles and graphics in this message are copyrighted, unless specifically noted otherwise. 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