LONDON UNDER ATTACK

FENLEY: - A year ago bomber’s targeted Madrid now they hit London and Egypt.  The intelligent sources believed a new Al Qaeda has risen from the ashes of the Afghanistan and these attacks maybe their handy work. This BBC investigation was broadcast a few days after London was attacked on Thursday the 7th July.

PRE-TITLE -LONDON UNDER ATTACK

UPS: - MICHAEL HENNING -  I just remembered being turned, twisted, not knowing what was happening and pushed down onto the ground.

UPS: - CAROLINE CHROBOK - There was a bit of smoke pouring in and it was sort of this horrible smell and I could really feel it going down my throat.

UPS: - PETER TAYLOR - On Thursday, what Londoners had long been told to expect happened, the capital came under attack, the death toll now climbs beyond fifty with hundreds more injured, some critically.  Many were not surprised, I’ve spent the past year investigating the way Al Qaeda has changed, taking the Madrid train bombings as an illustration, for London it was only a matter of time.  Madrid may well have been the blue print, both attacks bear the bloody hallmark of the new Al Qaeda.  Before Thursday life carried on as usual, there were some who claimed that the threat was hyped by government to justify increasing curbs on civil liberties, on Thursday the nightmare became real.  Over a year ago I interviewed Scotland Yard’s head of counter terrorism, his words still ring in my ears.

UPS: - Sir DAVID VENESS; Head Specialist Operations, Metropolitan Police, 2004 - A danger remains, there will be an attack and I fear it is 'when' within the United Kingdom, I think the ‘if’ is academic.

UPS: - WOMAN - What was it, do you know?

UPS: - MAN - I think it was a bomb.  It was at Kings Cross, there was a bomb on the train.

UPS: - TAYLOR - The list of the dead and injured reflects the diversity of London, there were Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, Jews, Christians and those of other denominations and those of none.  A terrorist bomb does not discriminate.

UPS: - AMBULANCE - Can everyone please remain calm, as soon as we are ready to evacuate we will get everybody off.

UPS: - MAN - Can you walk along please, keep walking along.

UPS: - TAYLOR - Now London shares kinship with Madrid. A year last March terrorists hit early morning commuters as they arrived at Atocha station. There were four explosions, a hundred and ninety one people were killed, hundreds more injured.  The Madrid bomber struck just before eight, the London bombers an hour later, in both cases no warning was given. The chilling similarities between London and Madrid appear to suggest a common hand, that is why Madrid may help us understand London and who may have been responsible. It is telling that the Spanish police have now arrived in the capital to share the lessons that they’ve learned. As trials begin in Spain, it’s become clear that the threat is now from a new generation of Islamist extremists, they're the new Al Qaeda, street wise, young and home grown, committed to waging global jihad, that’s holy war, against America and her allies, the UK is high on their list.

UPS: - MANOLO NAVARRET; Head of International Intelligence, Guardia Civil - They were using local people, nobody well trained and a very simplistic way but very successfully. This is a change for us because our main priority was to identify an attack like the 11th of September, or the Bali bombing, or some quite sophisticated.

UPS: - TAYLOR - Jamal Ahmidan was a typical member of the Madrid cell, a drug dealer with a long criminal record, he was radicalised in jail in Morocco.

UPS: - MANOLO NAVARRET - Jamal Ahmidan was a crook, he was a common criminal with no specially distinguishable reason, but I think that he was a very committed criminal, very  a person who was have a clear idea what he want to do.

UPS: - TAYLOR - Ahmidan lived life in the fast lane, he travelled through Europe with fifteen different IDs, trafficking ecstasy, cocaine and Moroccan hash, he smoked, drank and roared round Madrid with his girlfriend and was a fanatical supporter of Real Madrid. It was not surprising he slipped under the radar of Spain’s secretive intelligence services.

UPS: - JOSE CABANILLAS-SANCHEZ; Chief of Police Intelligence, Spain - We could never have imagined that a mere drug trafficker would turn into an Islamic suicide bomber and get involved in an attack like this.

UPS: - TAYLOR - The idea that the London bombers would have stood out as they boarded buses and trains because of their distinctive beards and Islamic robes no longer applies. Key members of the Madrid cell have become what is known as Takfiris, they dress like westerners and did what many westerners do, they smoked, drank and did drugs. But behind the façade they were undercover jihadis bent on killing infidels, that’s anyone who rejects their rigid interpretation of the Koran.  Much of the best intelligence on Takfiris was gleaned in Morocco by the general who heads its internal security service, his teams tracked down and interrogated those behind another series of bombings in Casablanca, almost a year before Madrid, he gave an early warning about Takfiris.

UPS: - GENERAL HAMIDOU LAANIGRI; Chief of Moroccan Internal Security - Al Qaeda’s new members have to stick to a dress code, to start with you have to wear a beard and a long tunic, you only go to the next stage and dress in normal clothes when you go on active service, that’s to help you blend in to go underground. So it is when they change their clothes that we know they’re ready for action and have the potential for violence.

UPS: - TAYLOR - Laanigri warned Madrid about the new threat, but little was done, as a result Spanish intelligence missed a number of clues that might have prevented the bombings. They had not grasped how much Al Qaeda had changed. Ahmidan even had the nerve to do a drug deal barely three months before the train bombings, it ended with him shooting a man outside a bar, no alarm bells rang.

UPS: - MANOLO NAVARRET - He had the shooting with another drug trafficker in order to obtain some money from him.

UPS: - TAYLOR - He shot him?

UPS: - MANOLO NAVARRET - Yeah, yeah.

UPS: - TAYLOR – Is not that risky if you are part of a terrorist cell to go around shooting.

UPS: - MAN - Yeah, yeah, this is, but...

UPS: - TAYLOR - People you want money from?

UPS: - MANOLO NAVARRET - Yeah, because by that time, generally the year 2004, we estimate that the group was fully integrated, maybe we were focused on a more sophisticated attack, very well organised, very well prepared and a clear Al Qaeda bombing attack type of attack, coming from Al Qaeda.

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UPS: - TAYLOR - All over the world there have been thousands of victims since Al Qaeda first launched it is large scale attacks. The intelligence services grew to know their enemy and its personnel after years of analysis. They understood it is structure, training and operational methods, but that was the old Al Qaeda.  Afghanistan was the old Al Qaeda’s hub, before September 11th jihadi recruits came to train in its camps.  They then returned to fight on behalf of their Muslim brothers in theatres like Bosnia, Chechnya and Kashmir. British jihadis also went to the camps. After September 11th, US forces destroyed the jihadi training camps in Afghanistan, the new Al Qaeda arose from the debris and the dust, the message was return and fight jihad at home.  America’s overall commander in Afghanistan and Iraq knows Al Qaeda’s global threat.  Has the structure of Al Qaeda changed?

UPS: - Lt-Gen JOHN ABIZAID; Commander, US Central Command - The structure has certainly changed, it’s had to change because so much damage has been done to the structure, but I think it’s also clear that they’ve become more de-centralized, they’ve developed a style of leadership where franchises will take more action that's essentially action that the local leader decides on for himself.

UPS: - MICHAEL SCHEUER; FORMER HEAD CIA BIN LADEN UNIT - Bin Laden has always been very clear that he and Al Qaeda can’t do this alone, that they need to enlist other Muslims to join them against the United States and he's always said that Al-Qaeda's first role is inciter and instigator rather than command and control.

UPS: - TAYLOR - MI5 knows this too and I almost certainly considering the possibility that the attacks may have been carried out by a small local group with no apparent connection to Al Qaeda. That may explain why the cell got under the wire, there was not a scrap of intelligence, no tell tale chatter over the air waves. MI5’s counter parts in Madrid were equally blind, it was only later that they discovered that this jihad on video tape was the drug dealer Jamal Ahmidan, they’d never realised until then that he was a terrorist. He is claiming responsibility for the Madrid bombings on behalf of Al Qaeda in Europe.

UPS: - MASKED MAN - We declare our responsibility for what happened in Madrid, a response to you collaborating with the criminal Bush.  This is a response to the crimes that you have caused in the world and specifically in Iraq and Afghanistan and there will be more if God wills it.

UPS: - TAYLOR - The direct reference to Iraq was a further warning to the British police, they were now coming to terms with the new de-centralized Al Qaeda and what it might mean for London and the UK. 

UPS: - PETER CLARKE - What we’re looking at is something which is much more fluid, more flexible, more mobile and so with that obviously comes all the associated difficulties of finding, investigating, detecting and ultimately of course prosecuting.

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UPS: - TAYLOR - If you look at the attacks in Madrid and Casablanca, those attacks were carried out  by home grown autonomous cells, what does that tell you about the way in which things have changed?

UPS: - PETER CLARKE - As time has gone on, we’ve found that we’ve been investigating groups of British citizens and that is obviously is a great cause for concern and exploring the international linkages of those groups of British citizens.

UPS: - TAYLOR - I interviewed Peter Clarke a few months ago, Britain's contribution to the US coalition in Iraq was far greater than Spain's, and the anti terrorist branch in London were already anticipating a Madrid style attack.  

UPS: - TAYLOR - Ferocious anger lies behind the bombings and not just on the part of the victims. Anger too drives the bombers and their sympathisers, most recently over Iraq. We filmed in Regent’s Park mosque last November, the night the Americans stormed Fallujah. It fired the blood of radical young Muslims who had taken over the courtyard of the mosque.

UPS: - MAN - The obligation is jihad, we need to rise the sword and we need to have the heads rolling, we need more American soldiers, we need more British soldiers, we want them killed.

UPS: - TAYLOR - The rolling heads refer to the brutal beheading videos now emerging on the internet from Iraq.

UPS: - MAN – It is up to you the Muslims to decide which camp you are going to side with. Are you going to side with George Bush, with the kafirs with the leaders of middle east and Asia are you going to side with the mujahids Sheik Osama Abu Musab Zarqawi.

UPS: - TAYLOR - Iraq is now the frontline for the new al-Qaeda. For a new generation of jihadis it offers training, action and world wide publicity for their cause. Iraq, not Afghanistan, is the new Al-Qaeda’s hub and now joins Palestine as the Jihadis’ justification for terrorist attacks all over the world. Mike Sheuer has spent much of his career with the CIA analysing Bin Laden.

UPS: - MICHAEL SCHEUER; Former Head, CIA Bin Laden Unit - What they have done since 9/11 and especially since the support the United States got in Afghanistan and Iraq, is to sort of launch warning attacks against those countries that are helping us in those two places.

UPS: - TAYLOR - Like Madrid?

UPS: - SCHEUER - Like Madrid, the Italians at Nasiriyah, the British in Istanbul, the French in Karachi and the Limburg off of Yemen, the Germans in Tunisia, some Japanese diplomats were killed in Iraq.  Virtually at one point Bin Laden and Zawahiri had named twenty three countries that deserved to be punished for helping the Americans, either in Afghanistan, in Iraq, or Iraq and all twenty three of those countries have been hit.

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UPS: - TAYLOR - Some jihadi supporters have twisted the news coverage of Thursday’s attacks for their own propaganda advantage and the internet carries their message that it is revenge for Iraq. And it’s the internet, the world wide web that drives the radicalising power of Iraq, few attacks take place without a camcorder, computer and internet access to send the images spinning round the world. In Britain there’s an audience too.

UPS: - EVAN KOHLMANN - While a picture may be worth a thousand words, a video up loaded to an internet site is worth ten thousand.

UPS: - TAYLOR - Evan Kohlmann studies the internet traffic from Iraq for clients that include the US government.

UPS: - EVAN KOHLMANN; US GOVERNMENT  ADVISOR - You show a video of someone blowing themselves up, killing Americans, spreading American blood, that has an incalculable effect in terms of recruiting future terrorists.

UPS: - TAYLOR - The videos of slaughter and beheadings, many too gruesome to show, play a central a central role in radicalising young Muslims, many are made by followers of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Al Qaeda’s leader in Iraq. We monitored the response to Thursday’s attacks on Islamist web sites, these were some of the postings.

UPS: - MAN - They are the lions of Al Qaeda, Osama has sent them. They are the soldiers of god.  London you have paid a good part of the price of what you owe for your war against Islam and Muslims. I hope with all my heart that the heroic lions of Al Qaeda are behind this, because this has cooled our hearts, at least those that elected that pig Blair for a second term can be punished, some of them slaughtered and in their own capital.

UPS: - TAYLOR - This Saudi dissident operates a web site quite legally on which Iraqi videos and claims of responsibility from Zarqawi’s media operation are posted. He operates from Wembley. A posting on his website was one of several that claimed responsibility for the London bombs. I spoke to him before the attacks.

UPS: - Dr MUHAMMAD AL-MASSARI - You up load it to a trusted site and the guy who is waiting for it to be uploaded is checking every few hours, will down load it immediately and send it where ever he wants.

UPS: - TAYLOR - And it just spreads?

UPS: - AL-MASSARI - It just spreads like fire in dry woods, unbelievable. If someone is sufficiently young and sufficiently capable, he may think he should join them and we know that this joining is continuous, ongoing.. massively. So that is really one of the most massive propaganda. And you know human beings, if you see an enemy tank being blown in pieces, it gives you enormous feeling of satisfaction and so encouragement to do the same.

UPS: - TAYLOR - Do you really think that a young Muslim accessing this material in an internet café will say, I want to go and do the same, I want to go and fight?

UPS: - MAN - I think so, I think so.  It’s very mobilizing.

UPS: - TAYLOR - There is some evidence that jihadis have left the UK to fight and possibly train in Iraq, nobody knows in what numbers. Do you believe that young British Muslims are leaving the UK and going to fight with the insurgents in Iraq?

UPS: PETER CLARKE; Anti-Terrorist Branch, Met Police - There is evidence that some, we do not know the precise numbers, could very well be very small.  There is evidence that some young British men are have left the United Kingdom with the intention of going to Iraq.

UPS: - TAYLOR - But there would have been no need for Thursday’s bombers to travel to learn how to make explosives. Would be jihadis just have to log on, training manuals are there at the click of a mouse, with detailed instructions on how to make and detonate bombs, carry out kidnappings and make homemade weapons. These images were found on the hard drive of one suspect allegedly connected to the Madrid conspirators. The train bombs were detonated by alarms on mobile phones.

UPS: - EVAN KOHLMANN; US GOVERNMENT ADVISER - Even at home you have a ‘how to’ guide to terrorism available at the touch of a button, how to build a suicide bomb vest, how to build a suicide car bomb, the motivation and the tools to commit terror.

UPS: - MICHAEL SCHEUER; FORMER HEAD, CIA BIN LADEN UNIT - They have mounted a great number of these things.  One of them called the encyclopaedia of jihad is apparently about 12,000 pages long, based primarily on US and British special forces and marine core manuals. You can now in the comfort of your home down load those parts of the manual you want to study, whether it is bomb making or small unit combat tactics. 

UPS: - KOHLMANN - In fact it is the terrorists who have the technological advantage when it comes to the internet, it is the terrorists who are able to mysteriously move through the internet without being detected, without being seen by law enforcement and are able to distribute these materials in many cases without any consequences happening to them.

UPS: - TAYLOR - Let’s just have a look at one of the websites which is on the forum attached to your website, you tell me what it is.

UPS: - Dr MUHAMMAD AL-MASSARI - This is essentially it's a magazine.  The word Battar originally means amputate, so they amputate... but this is the name of the sword, because the sword has various names in Arabic, one of them is battar.

UPS: - TAYLOR - And what is the purpose of Al Battar?

UPS: - MASSARI - The purposes of Battar is to assist the jihadi with education, information including even arms information, G3 description of the G3 gun etc so it contains intellectual articles and contains also issues about weapons etc.

UPS: - TAYLOR – It is like a jihadi do it yourself correspondence course.

UPS: - AL-MASSARI - And it is also recently if someone was able to snatch away the American manuals about light arms and demolition and he distributed that also in the internet.

UPS: - TAYLOR - But a young Muslim could read this, train from it, because it’s an on line correspondence course in jihad, go to Iraq, use the weapons against British soldiers, in other words he has learned from what is attached to your website, how to attack British soldiers, don’t you feel uncomfortable with that?

UPS: - AL-MASSARI - No, I don’t feel uncomfortable because if he decide he will relinquish his citizenship and leave the country and join the jihad, that’s his right, his privilege, he will be no British citizen any more, he will be at war with Britain and that’s the possible choice.

UPS: - TAYLOR - The surprise to many Londoners is that the capital had not been targeted before.  One of the reasons is that through much of the previous decade the capital had become a haven for foreign jihadis, it was as if there were an unspoken deal, we don’t arrest them and they don’t attack us. Some Muslims called it a covenant of security, that if you are a guest in a country you do not do it harm. But that era is over, it’s another sign of how Al Qaeda has changed. The problem in the ‘90s was they were not doing anything actively against the United Kingdom, therefore it made it presumably really quite difficult for you to do anything had you been minded to do so.

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UPS: - SIR DAVID VENESS; HEAD SPECIALIST OPERATIONS, METROPOLITAN POLICE, 2004 - Yes, I mean that is a... I think part of the process of evolution, that what we are now seeing is unequivocally those groups are engaged in targeting within the United Kingdom.

UPS: - TAYLOR - So, if Scotland Yard knew that, why did not they prevent Thursday’s attack?  It is not that simple.  The security services believe they’ve prevented several attacks, up to half a dozen we were told.  Jurors will decide the strength of the evidence when cases come to court.

UPS: - PETER CLARKE; Head, Anti-Terrorist Branch, Metropolitan Police - What we have learned over the last three or four years is that there has been a considerable amount of terrorist activity in this country, both in terms of support and in terms of intentions to mount actual attacks, so I think the only sensible conclusion to draw is that the threat is very real.

UPS: - TAYLOR - The so-called covenant of security clearly died some time ago, the north London cleric Omar Bakri spelt it out for his followers less than six weeks ago, he began by reading a message from the insurgents in Iraq.

UPS: - OMAR BAKRI - On the last 24 hours we increased our attack on the enemy to the level yesterday they scored 120 operations in Baghdad. Nowadays there is nothing called the covenant of security in the twenty first century. Therefore, the Muslim has to, as one camp, fight against the infidel as one camp.  That is the new reality.

UPS: - TAYLOR - As yet we don’t know how the London bombers trained and operated, how they were motivated and how they used the internet. No doubt more will become clear over the coming weeks.  Yasser Al Sirri, an Egyptian exile in Britain, is one of the most outspoken champions of jihad, but he is selective in what he condones.

UPS: - YASSER AL SIRRI - This could have happened in retaliation for Blair’s policies in Iraq which may have caused some groups to fight the British forces in Iraq because they are occupiers and are allied with American forces, but that does not justify them carrying out such an act against innocent British civilians.

UPS: - TAYLOR - But innocent civilians did die in London and some were quick to point the finger at the cities large Muslim community. Yet two of the bombs went off in Muslim neighbourhoods with many families deeply affected. Muslim leaders condemn the atrocities with prayers for the victims said in mosques across Britain on Friday. There were concerns that Muslims would be blamed for the work of extremists.

UPS: - Dr MUHAMMAD ABDUL BARI - Muslims, non-Muslims, wider society we all are victims of this atrocity, so I do not think... I do not think we... it does not come to my mind, because we have been speaking against any form of terrorism, whether it’s done by individual, whether it’s done by group or whether it’s done by a state.

UPS: - TAYLOR - And the East London mosque, just a few minutes from Aldgate experienced it is own tragedy on Thursday.

UPS: - DR KAMRUL HASSAN; UNCLE - Her name is Shahara Akther Islam and she’s a twenty year old young female, she was essentially on her way to work.

UPS: - JAMSHAD ALI - My granddaughter when she was young you know I all the time look after her... I am feeling very bad.

UPS: - SHAMSUL ISLAM; FATHER - My brother said it all I have no words to say.

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www.bbc.co.uk/panorama

CREDITS

Reporter

PETER TAYLOR

Camera

STEPHEN FOOTE

BERNARD GLANCY

ALEX HANSEN

NEIL HIGGINSON

DAVID LANGAN

CHRIS MORPHET

RICHARD OPYRCHAL

JON STAPLETON

Sound

TONY PASFIELD

Online

BOYD NAGLE

Production Team

LIBBY HAND

KAREN HOOPER

TAMARA KAYE

MORA McLAGAN

RICHARD ONEIL

MARTHA O'SULLIVAN

EMANUELE PASQUALE

AMANDA SHADWICK

JO WADE

GINNY WILLIAMS

Web Producer

ALEX MURRAY

Film Research

REBECCA FORSEY

BARRY PURKS

KATE REDMAN

STUART ROBERTSON

EAMONN WALSH

Research

NEIL DOYLE

KATHLYN POSNER

Film Editors

GERAINT EVANS

BOB HAYWARD

RUTH HORNER

JOHN KERRY

DOMINIQUE LUTER

ADAM RICHARDSON

MATTHEW STERLIN

SIMON THORNE

Assistant Producer

STEVE BARRETT

PATRICK BARRE

FIONA BLAIR

MATT COTTINGHAM

PATRICIA DE MESQUITA

JACK ENRIGHT

HANNAH GRIFFITHS

KINDA HADDAD

BILL LAW

BEN LIMBERG

KATY MORGAN

MICK MORTON

NICK NORMAN BUTLER

JAMES OLIVER

KENNETH PAYNE

KATY STEAD

JENNY STIMPSON

SHAHDA TULAGANOVA

Producers

HOWARD BRADBURN

THEA GUEST

ANGELI MEHTA

      ALICIA ARCE JANE McSORLEY

      SUBNV BABUTA      HUW MARKS

      RICHARD BEE JEREMY MONBLATT

      JONATHAN BRUNERT  TRISTAN QUINN

      STEVE CONDE PHIL REES

      WILL DAWS   STEPHEN SCOTT

      FARAH DURRAN      GUY SMITH

      TOM GILES   SARAH WALDRON

      RUHI HAMID  CHRIS WOODS

      SHELLEY JOFRE     VIVIAN WHITE

"The New Al-Qaeda" Series Producer

SANDY SMITH

"The New Al-Qaeda" Executive Producer

FIONA STOURTON

Deputy Editors

ANDREW BELL

FRANK SIMMONDS

Editor

MIKE ROBINSON

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