Netflix’s new true crime documentary series, Attack on London: Hunting the 7/7 Bombers, presents an extensively detailed look into what is considered to be the worst terrorist attack in the United Kingdom to date. On a seemingly usual day in 2005, a series of explosions rocked the London Underground network, followed by a devastating attack on a public bus, as part of a planned terrorist attack that claimed the lives of 52 innocent people. Attack on London takes a deep dive into the investigation that followed this horrific attack, questioning whether the MI5 could have done a better job of identifying and possibly even preventing the attack, while also investigating similar attacks attempted just a couple of weeks later.
What happened on the 7th of July, 2005?
Attack on London begins with the account of Dan Biddle, a common Londoner whose life changed completely on the 7th of July, 2005. On that fateful morning, at about quarter to nine, Dan was aboard a London Underground train, feeling uncomfortable because of the hot weather and the crammed coach. He recalls having a remarkably unlucky and frustrating morning, as he had just missed his stop as well while trying to text his workplace that he would be reaching late. But as the train moved back into the underground tunnels, Dan remembers feeling even more uncomfortable because of the staring gaze of a young man in the coach. Just as Dan was about to question this anxious-looking fellow about why he was staring at him so strangely, the latter put his hand into the backpack that he had been carrying and seemingly pressed something, and moments later, the backpack exploded with terrific force.
The explosion on Dan Biddle’s train occurred at 8:49 am, but it was not the only blast that shook London that day, or rather, at that very moment. Three bombs had been detonated at that specific time, 8:49 am, all aboard London Underground trains that were carrying passengers travelling towards their respective workplaces during the rush hour. A Circle Line train had been attacked when it was traveling between the Liverpool Street and Aldgate stations. An explosion took place on another Circle Line train, this time between the Edgware Road and Paddington stations. The third bomb exploded aboard a Piccadilly Line train that had been moving from St. Pancras to Russell Square.
In the first few minutes, the authorities had no idea what had just happened, and the loud noise of the explosions and the fact that the trains had suddenly stopped on their tracking screens were believed to have been due to some mechanical failure. But as smoke started billowing out of the stations, along with panicked passengers who had been on the platforms, it was evident that something major had gone down, and some foul play was first suspected. Some of the passengers on these three trains, like Dan Biddle, miraculously survived the blasts, much to their own surprise and shock, since they found themselves surrounded by dead bodies. Eventually, as the emergency workers rushed into the underground tunnels, the survivors were found and rescued from the debris.
The police initially believed that six, and not three, bombs had been exploded in the London Underground tunnels because of the fact that survivors from six different trains reported the blast. In reality, the bombs had been detonated strategically inside the tunnels to ensure that three trains running on the parallel tracks would also be affected by the blasts. As would be revealed some time later, 39 innocent victims had been killed in the three bombings, but this was not yet the end of the terrorist attack. Around 58 minutes after the attacks on the subway trains, an explosion took place on the top deck of a London number 30 public bus while the vehicle was taking passengers from Marble Arch to Hackney Wick. Eyewitnesses remember seeing the bus suddenly explode with such force that its roof flew off when it was around Tavistock Square. 13 innocent victims were instantly killed in this second attack, and London was now on red alert, since the worst terrorist attacks in the country’s history had just taken place. Prime Minister Tony Blair, who had been away at the G8 Summit in Scotland, had been immediately informed and warned that London was probably under a direct attack orchestrated by terrorists.
How were the bombers found?
The multi-sited terrorist attack naturally led to a lot of panic in the city, and thousands of Londoners started to drive away, towards the countryside and to other cities, fearing that their homes and neighborhoods might just be targeted next. The MI5 had a daunting task ahead of them—to find out more about the attack and the bombers who had carried it out, along with their motives, and to ensure public safety once again. The very first substantial clue was found by Cliff Todd, the leading forensics investigator in the country, who had been brought in to scan the destroyed train coaches in the tunnels, around 8 hours after the attacks.
Going through the coach that was filled with debris and human remains, Todd came across an unnatural depression on the floor of it, which suggested that the explosive device had been placed at that very spot. Just beside this depression was a dead body with its face completely shredded, which indicated that the individual must have been cowering over the bomb when it exploded, as if to protect it from being noticed. This was the first time that it was confirmed that suicide bombers had carried out the terrorist attacks, meaning that the perpetrators were now dead, but it was still crucial to know their identities.
An MI5 investigative team had already been scouring through security camera footage from around the areas where the attacks had taken place, and eventually something suspicious was found on the tapes. Four men carrying huge rucksacks were seen entering the King’s Cross station together, and they were found to have arrived at the place in a private car that was still parked in the lot behind the station. A bomb disposal team was immediately dispatched to check this car, and numerous small homemade explosive devices were found in the trunk of the vehicle, confirming that the four men who had arrived in it were indeed the bombers.
Next up, a thorough search of the crime scenes was carried out, with the intention of compiling a list of all the victims who had been killed. Since the attackers had all been suicide bombers, the only way to verify their identities was also to go through this list and find any sort of match between them. Eventually, the MI5 authorities in West Yorkshire discovered a match between three of the victims, as they all came from the same neighborhood around Beeston, on the outskirts of Leeds. They quickly diverted the investigation into finding out more about these three men, Mohamed Sidique Khan, Shehzad Tanweer, and Hasib Hussain, because of the crucial fact that although they hailed from the same locality, their IDs had been found at three different crime scenes, meaning that they were no regular tourists. When the authorities reached the particular neighborhood, they eventually found a connection between Hasib Hussain and a suspicious house a few kilometers away, in Leeds. Although Hasib had seemingly been a very ordinary and obedient 18-year-old, he had recently rented a house in Alexandra Grove, Leeds, without his parents’ or elder brother’s knowledge.
When the police reached this house, there were clear traces of toxic chemicals around the property, and matters became clearer as they entered the place. So far, the forensic experts had been dumbfounded by the nature of the explosive that had been used in the attacks, and it was now that they realized that a special kind of explosive had been designed for the attacks by combining hydrogen peroxide with ground black pepper. An ID of the fourth bomber, Germaine Lindsay, was also found at the house. Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer, British nationals belonging to a Pakistani immigrant family, had carried out the explosions on the three trains along with Lindsay, a British national who had converted to Islam. Hasib Husain, once again a British national belonging to a Pakistani immigrant family, had carried out the attack on the number 30 bus. All four men had been inspired by Islamic terrorist ideology, and their attack on London was intended to warn Western civilization.
Could the MI5 have prevented the terrorist attacks?
A number of videotapes had also been collected as evidence from the rented house in Alexandra Grove, and they contained homemade videos of the men clarifying their stance. Inspired by the Islamic extremism propagated by Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, the four men had decided to take up arms against the British government and the people who had voted in this government for having recently supported the USA’s attacks on Iraq. Although MI5, at the time, claimed that these four individuals never had a criminal past or any suspicious alliances, Richard Watson, an investigative journalist who appears in the Netflix docuseries, claims otherwise. In fact, Watson provides substantial proof as well, making it seem possible that the attacks could have been avoided had the MI5 been more efficient at their work.
Following the 9/11 attacks in New York City, the Western world had grown more concerned about security, and people with ties to countries from the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Pakistan were admittedly surveilled a bit more than usual. However, when Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer traveled to Pakistan in November of 2004, neither the British government nor its intelligence agency got any whiff of it. Information discovered later revealed that the two men had received training from al-Qaeda during this trip, and Khan, who had traveled to Pakistan for such training at least three times in his life, had received extensive weapons and explosives training from a senior al-Qaeda militant.
What is even more shocking is the fact that the MI5 had actually surveilled Khan and Tanweer for some time in 2004, after they were spotted with Omar Khyam, a known British terrorist with al-Qaeda links. At the time, Khyam had been planning an attack on British nightclubs and restaurants, which was efficiently intercepted by the authorities, but in an instance of bizarre negligence, the MI5 had let Khan and Tanweer slip out of their grasp. Attack on London has Eliza Manningham-Buller, the MI5 Director General from 2002-07, clarify the situation, as she states that the intelligence agency simply had too many suspicious individuals to look into at the time, and they did not feel that Khan and Tanweer were persons of interest. The official inquest into the 7/7 attacks later heavily criticized the MI5 for their flawed investigation before and after the incident. However, it also clarified that the MI5 could not have logically prevented the bombings, thus officially negating any such theory.
Were the 21/7 attacks linked to the 7/7 bombings?
While the 7/7 Bombings were a devastating strike on the UK and Western life in general, they were not the only terrorist activity in London that month. Merely two weeks after the multi-sited attacks, a similar terrorist assault was attempted on the 21st of June, 2005. Four bomb explosions were attempted, once again on three different trains of the London Underground train network and on a bus on the streets of London, but fortunately, the terrorists failed to detonate the bombs properly. Upon triggering the bombs that they hid in their respective backpacks, only the detonators blasted, causing a loud sound and a strong and pungent smell, but the blasts were too ineffective to hurt anyone. But it seemed like the authorities were simply not prepared for a second series of attacks so soon after 7/7, because of which all four bombers managed to escape.
As an investigation began, the MI5 authorities were unsure about whether to consider this attack as a continuation of the 7/7 bombings or to look at it as a separate incident, perhaps attempted by copycat terrorists. Eventually, clear enough images of the four perpetrators could be found from the security camera footage, but since the police needed to nab these individuals as soon as possible, the images were released to the public. This was how each of them was identified, as neighbors, gym acquaintances, and even their family members, in the two other cases, reported them to the police.
Yasin Hassan Omar, Muktar Said Ibrahim, Ramzi Mohammed, and Hussain Osman all hailed from families that had immigrated to the UK from different parts of Africa, and they were heavily influenced by radical Islamic ideology. They had been influenced by al-Qaeda’s jihad against the West, and it is very likely that they had worked together with the 7/7 bombers. Although no direct link between the two attacks could be established, a similar concoction of hydrogen peroxide and chapati flour had been used in the 21/7 attacks, suggesting that the two terrorist groups must have received this recipe for homemade bombs from a single source. The 21/7 attacks had failed only because lesser quantities of hydrogen peroxide had been used, because of which the bombs had no potency.
What is the tragic tale of Jean Charles?
In the frenzy that followed the 21/7 failed bombings, the MI5 and the London Metropolitan Police ended up committing a horrific mistake that claimed the life of an innocent civilian. While trying to look for the suspects, a Special Operations team started tailing a man who supposedly resembled one of the targets, and a massive miscommunication followed. Although the man was not officially identified to be the same person as one of the suspects, the team started to follow him, first on foot, then on the bus, and then on the underground train. By this time, the nerves of the officers were on edge, and more miscommunication followed, which led to them shooting the supposed target dead on the train, apparently out of fear he could have triggered a bomb otherwise.
In reality, the man who had just been killed was Jean Charles de Menezes, a Brazilian national who had nothing to do with the terrorist attacks but had just been going around London for his work. In a clear case of misunderstanding because of racism, the special operations officers, all white men, could not differentiate between a North African man, whom they were supposed to pursue, and a Brazilian man with brown skin, whom they had just killed. Eventually, the Met police tried to prove that the shooting of de Menezes was lawful because of the difficult circumstances, but the inquest jury overseeing the matter rejected the claim. The Met was found guilty of endangering the lives of the citizens, for which a fine of around 175,000 pounds was imposed on the department. However, no police officer was individually held responsible or faced any legal charges for Jean’s death.
What happened to the perpetrators of the 21/7 terrorist attack?
The police eventually received a call from an apartment owner in Birmingham who had rented his property to Yasin Omar, and as they started checking the security cameras from around the area, the bomber was found. Omar had been trying to escape by concealing himself in a burqa, but the police quickly followed him to his apartment in Birmingham on the 27th and arrested him without any hitch. The next target was Ramzi Mohammad, who was known to own an apartment in Dalgarno Gardens, in London. On the 29th of June, the police raided this house and used smoke grenades to flush the perpetrator out. Much to their surprise, both Ramzi Mohammad and Muktar Said Ibrahim emerged from the apartment, surrendering themselves after admitting defeat to the smoke bombs, and they were finally arrested.
The only remaining perpetrator at large, Hussain Osman, had escaped the UK by this time, having taken a train to France, but MI5 had found out about him having family in Italy. Thus, it was believed that Osman would be travelling to Italy soon, and he was then easily tracked when the man inserted an Italian SIM card into his phone after having arrived in the country. On the night of 29th June, the Italian police arrested Osman at his relatives’ house in Rome, and the man was eventually extradited to the UK. All four of the bombers were convicted of conspiracy to murder, and they are all currently in prison, serving a prison sentence of at least 40 years.
