Tag Archives: Terrorism

Man Shot in London Tube

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This news is just in:

Police shot a man at a London subway station on Friday, a day after the city was hit by a second wave of terror attacks in two weeks. The circumstances of the shooting were not immediately clear, nor was the man’s condition….

Passengers reported a man ? described as South Asian ? ran onto a train. Witnesses said police chased him, he tripped, then they shot him.

“They pushed him onto the floor and unloaded five shots into him. He’s dead,” witness Mark Whitby told the British Broadcasting Corp.

Whitby said it didn’t look like the man was carrying anything but said he was wearing a thick coat that looked padded.
Sourced From Associated Press

Sky is also reporting hat a mosque in the east of the capital has been surrounded by armed officers and residents told to stay indoors. The Times says it’s East London Mosque in Whitechapel and has the whole story.

London Incidents Update

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The Times has a pretty reasoned assessment of the state of play. We are still with the same two theories, the copycats, and the same group. I don’t like the copycat one since it seems to overlook some basic details. These attacks are not so easy to carry out logistically. Normally there is a high degree of training and preparation, especially ‘mentalisation’ if suicide bombers are involved (eyewitnesses suggest that at least one tube bomber today did try and blow himself up). So I don’t think this kind of attack can be improvised on the ‘oh why don’t we try and do one of those this week’ kind of basis. Whoever was at work today will have had this planned for some time. So then, what a coincidence that a different group had exactly the same idea, even down to the bus (which now seems intentional).

Also the timing was reasonably coordinated. They managed to penetrate security and get to the detonation stage. Avoiding security may have been one of the reasons for the time of day chosen. The question is really why they had so few explosives, and why the bombs didn’t go off. The way things panned out on 7 July, and what the implications of the car in Luton car park are, may provide part of the missing explanation. Essentially I agree with Robert Ayers (quoted in the Times link) from – what a surprise – Chatham House.
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New ‘Incidents’ in London

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The press and TV stations are begining to report a series of new incidents on the London underground. I use the word ‘incidents’ since things are so confused it is not clear what is happening. In one incident a rucksack apparently exploded, but the explosion was small. I will update as more info arrives.

On Thursday, the Warren Street, Shepherds Bush and Oval stations were evacuated. Emergency services personnel were called to the stations, police said.

“People were panicking. But very fortunately the train was only 15 seconds from the station,” witness Ivan McCracken told Sky news. McCracken said he smelled smoke at the Warren Street station, and people were panicking and coming into his carriage. He said he spoke to an Italian man who was comforting a woman after the evacuation.

“He said that a man was carrying a rucksack and the rucksack suddenly exploded. It was a minor explosion but enough to blow open the rucksack,” McCracken said. “The man then made an exclamation as if something had gone wrong. At that point everyone rushed from the carriage.”

Update 15:16 CET

The situation is still very confused. It seems there were 4 incidents, 3 in the tube, and one bus. The tube stations were Oval, Warren Street and Shepherd’s Bush. The bus was in Hackney Road, on a junction near Colombia Road, this is east London. There is speculation that detonators and not the bombs themselves went off. The emergency services report the following:

“We were called to Oval at 12:38 pm (1138 GMT) and sent three ambulance vehicles,” a spokesman said Thursday. “We were called to Warren Street at 12:45 pm (1145 GMT) and sent five vehicles. “We will shortly confirm details of the incident at Shepherd’s Bush. “At this time there are no reports of casualties at any of the scenes.”

I think you don’t need to be a genius to have imagined that after reports that Haroon Rashid Aswat had been arrested started circulating any remaining groups he might have set up would have been forced to act quickly.

Update 14:20 CET

Still thankfully no reports of anyone seriously injured. Massive police and security activity everywhere. And according to AP, at least one detention.

Police also said an armed police unit had entered University College hospital. Press Association, the British news agency, said they arrived shortly after an injured person was carried in.

On the blogging front, Robin at Perfect UK is covering developments from inside the UK.

Chatham House Update

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The New York Times is running a story about a document prepared by the Joint Terrorist Analysis Center (the coordinating nerve centre of Britain’s anti-terrorism activity) in June of this year. The document was apparently furbished to the NYT by a ‘foreign security service’ and “was not disputed by four senior British officials who were asked about it”. The majority of the article is about how the document lead the UK government to downgrade the security threat level just before the bombings. It also, however, contains this curious sentance:

“Events in Iraq are continuing to act as motivation and a focus of a range of terrorist related activity in the U.K.”

ie the UK government’s own anti-terrorism coordinators were saying it.

The Chatham House Paper

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This paper from the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) is causing an awful lot of fuss at the moment.

What it doesn’t say

“The question you have to pose is: what is this report suggesting we should have done? It is suggesting we should simply have put our heads down and hoped that we weren’t going to be attacked?”
Tony Blair

The report does not say anywhere ‘we should simply have put our heads down’. Blair obviously hasn’t either read it or been well briefed.

“I’m astonished that Chatham House is now saying that we should not have stood shoulder to shoulder with our long-standing allies in the United States,”
Jack Straw

The report says the UK shouldn’t have of been “working shoulder-to-shoulder with the United States as a back seat passenger rather than an equal decision maker.” This is not the same thing as not standing shoulder to shoulder. Our voice was not (eg) listened to over Fallujah.

What the report does say:

The Royal Institute of International Affairs, known as Chatham House, said that Britain’s support for the US did not mean it was an equal partner but a “pillion passenger compelled to leave the steering to the ally in the driving seat”.

The think-tank concluded that “the UK is at particular risk because it is the closest ally of the United States, has deployed armed forces in the military campaigns … in Afghanistan and in Iraq, and has taken a leading role in international intelligence, police and judicial co-operation against al-Qa’ida and in efforts to suppress its finances,” it said.

Chatham House warned that Iraq had created difficulties for the UK and the coalition. “It gave a boost to the al-Qa’ida network’s propaganda, recruitment and fundraising, caused a major split in the coalition, provided an ideal targeting and training area for al-Qa’ida-linked terrorists, and deflected resources that could have been deployed to assist the Karzai government [in Afghanistan] and bring Bin Laden to justice,”

Now go read, and let’s discuss (btw the thread on this starts in the last Turkish Bombing post).

Another Thread

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There is considerable speculation taking place at the moment about the nature of the connections (if any) between the British born bombers and militant jihadists in Pakistan. One of the names which keeps appearing is that of the group Jaish-e-Mohammad. Now this name should remind us that this is not the first time British-born Pakistani terrorists have caught the headlines: there is – for example – the case of Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who attended English public school Forest School Snaresbroke, and then the London School of Economics, before graduating to assasination and, in particular the horrendous killing of Daniel Pearl. Saeed Sheikh is a member of Jaish-e-Mohammad. Pakistani police are claiming that Shehzad Tanweer met with convicted Church bomber and terrorist Osama Nazir. Nazir is in custody in Pakistan, and according to sources there has allegedly confirmed the meeting:

“Nazir, a member of the al-Qaida-linked Sunni militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed, told authorities from jail Thursday that he met with Tanweer in Faisalabad, 75 miles southwest of Lahore, before his arrest.

It was not clear what the men discussed, or whether there was any connection between that meeting and the July 7 attacks against three trains and a double-decker bus.”

Rather chillingly, the above link on Jaish-e-Mohammad has the following under operational strategies: “Most Jaish-e-Mohammed attacks have been described as fidayeen (suicide terrorist) attacks”.

The damage done to Britain

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As regards his more general attitude to the war, you must not rely too much on those feelings of hatred which the humans are so fond of discussing in Christian, or anti-Christian, periodicals. In his anguish, the patient can, of course, be encouraged to revenge himself by some vindictive feelings directed towards the German leaders, and that is good so far as it goes. But it is usually a sort of melodramatic or mythical hatred directed against imaginary scapegoats. He has never met these people in real life?they are lay figures modelled on what he gets from newspapers. The results of such fanciful hatred are often most disappointing, and of all humans the English are in this respect the most deplorable milksops. They are creatures of that miserable sort who loudly proclaim that torture is too good for their enemies and then give tea and cigarettes to the first wounded German pilot who turns up at the back door.

        – C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

Britain is crawling with suspected terrorists and those who give them succour. The Government must act without delay, round up this enemy in our midst and lock them in internment camps.

Our safety must not play second fiddle to their supposed ?rights.?

        – Barbarism of twisted cause, unsigned editorial, The Sun

Considering how much the resilience of Londoners during the Blitz has come up over the last week in commentary about the bombings in London, I thought a little war-time C. S. Lewis might be an appropriate contrast to the rantings of London’s fish-wrap press.

Now that there is no longer any doubt that the authors of the bombings in London were British citizens – three born and raised in Yorkshire and one Jamaican born convert – we will see how Britain faces an element of the war on terrorism that has no real parallel to WWII and that Americans, Australians and Spanish people have so far managed to avoid: the prospect that the enemy may not be someone far away. How the British people handle this will say far more about their national character than their resolve to “preserve our way of life, our values of democracy and respect for life”.
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The ‘Chemist’ Arrested

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Police in Cairo may well have arrested Magdi el Nashar the chemistry PhD who is being sought by police in connection with the London bombings.

“Security forces in Egypt have arrested a man suspected of helping to make the bombs that killed 54 people in London last week. Scotland Yard has confirmed the arrest, saying that a man sought by British authorities had been detained near Cairo and is being questioned.”

Out Of Tragedy Comes Hope?

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On August 11, 1965 citizens of the United States woke up to news of an incident which, one way or another, changed fundamentally recent American history: the traffic arrest which lead to the Watts riots. The nature and context of the London Bombing may be different, but its impact on a nation may not be. I retain my view: the effects of what has just happened will be significant.
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