Police Debate if London Plotters Were Suicide Bombers, or Dupes
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/27/international/europe/27suicide.html? http://www.gadsdentimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050727/ZNYT/507270316/1011
By ELAINE SCIOLINO and DON VAN NATTA Jr.
LONDON, July 26 - Within hours of the July 7 attacks here, many British police and intelligence officials assumed that the four bombers had intended to die with their bombs.
But in recent days, some police officials are increasingly considering the possibility that the men did not plan to commit suicide and were duped into dying.
Investigators raising doubts about the suicide assumption have cited evidence to support this theory. Each of the four men who died in the July 7 attacks purchased round-trip railway tickets from Luton to London. Germaine Lindsay's rented car left in Luton had a seven-day parking sticker on the dashboard.
A large quantity of explosives were stored in the trunk of that car, perhaps for another attack. Another bomber had just spent a large sum to repair his car. The men carried driver's licenses and other ID cards with them to their deaths, unusual for suicide bombers.
In addition, none left behind a note, videotape or Internet trail as suicide bombers have done in the past. And the bombers' families were baffled by what seemed to be their decisions to kill themselves.
While some of these clues could be seen as the work of men intent on covering their trail, some investigators increasingly believe that the men may have been conned into carrying the bombs onto the trains and leaving them, thinking they were going to explode minutes later.
There remains some evidence suggesting that these were suicide bombers, beyond the fact that all died in the blasts. Their bodies, all of which were recovered, were positioned in a way that led investigators to make a preliminary determination that these may have been suicide attacks.
One of the remaining mysteries that neither camp can explain away is that the attacker on the bus died 57 minutes after the blasts on the trains; witnesses saw him putting his hand in the backpack. The bus bomber could support either theory.
To further complicate the matter, there are conflicting witness accounts of the behavior of the July 21 attackers. Some fled after the bombs failed to explode; at least one, on the bus, was said to have left the scene before the failed detonation.
The suicide question has major implications not only for the investigation, but also for the assessment of the terrorist threat that London faces. If the attacks were a suicide mission, they would be the first suicide bombings on European soil, and signal a dangerous new threat. Suicide could indicate a higher level of commitment and point to the existence within Britain of extremists willing to die for a cause. If the men were not suicide bombers, some of the most basic assumptions of the investigation would change. On one level, the idea makes the plot less ominous. It is much easier to recruit "mules" who will carry and deposit explosives than people who are prepared to die.
Several senior officials say a lively debate is under way within the investigation and wider intelligence circles. Some say the initial hypothesis that the July 7 attacks were carried out by determined fanatics willing to die in the name of a radical interpretation of Islam may have been too simplistic.
"What appeared to be straightforward linear thinking last week doesn't appear to be so today," said one foreign corporate head and former senior defense official with access to police information. "There was the strong feeling after Attack One that these kids must have really been brainwashed to become suicide bombers. Then the botched Attack Two happens, and the question now is whether these were dedicated guys ready to die or stupid guys run by a smart group of people pulling the strings."
The notion makes it more likely that there is an unknown mastermind who might have organized both attacks, and could still be organizing others. The British police have been reluctant to publicly declare the July 7 bombings a suicide mission. Britain's top police officers - Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police commissioner, and Peter Clarke, the head of Scotland Yard's antiterrorist branch - have steadfastly refused to call the men "suicide bombers" in public.
"Technically they're not suicide bombers," said one police officer familiar with the investigation. "Scotland Yard has not said they are. Even if we may think they probably were suicide bombers, the police have not said this outright."
A senior official of a European intelligence agency said: "The British from the beginning have had some doubts about the suicide hypothesis and cannot say exactly whether it is true. Our own analysis is that we can say that it is not absolutely necessary that this was a suicide mission."
The botched attacks of July 21 have made the debate more urgent. The July 21 team's lack of sophistication made some investigators reassess the July 7 bombing team's organization skills. Several investigators said the July 7 bombers, ranging in age from 18 to 30, might not have been sophisticated enough to plan a synchronized attack, with three bombs exploding in the London Underground within 45 seconds.
"I just have a hard time fathoming kids that young being that sophisticated," one senior intelligence official said.
Another theory, several intelligence and counterterrorism officials said, is that the men knew there were timers on the bombs, and were instructed to leave the explosives on the trains at a designated time, perhaps 9 a.m. "It is possible that they were told the bombs would blow up at 9:10 a.m. or 9:15 a.m., and they were to stay with them until 9 a.m.," another official said. The bombs went off at 8:50 a.m.
American investigators are convinced that several of the Sept. 11 hijackers, the so-called muscle who were recruited near the end of the operation, might not have been told that the four hijacked airplanes were intended to be used for suicide missions...
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