MI5 'starved of funds' in run-up to July 7 attacks

LONDON - MI5 had such limited resources leading up to the July 7 terror attacks on London in 2005 that it was able to properly track less than 1 per cent of its suspects, an official report has concluded.

The document published by the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), which monitors the security services on behalf of Parliament, revealed that despite the raised terrorism threat after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, MI5's funding had barely increased in the three years before the attacks on London's transport system.

This left the agency "playing catch-up, moving resources from one plot to the next" and with leads it could follow up only "when it had time".

Since the 2005 bombings MI5's funding has more than doubled.

The lack of funding was one of several revelations in the report, which concluded the security services could have done nothing to prevent the attacks.

This is despite the fact that the police and MI5 had come into contact with two of the bombers several times before the 2005 atrocities, which killed 52 people and remain the biggest terror attacks ever carried out on British soil.

The plot's ringleader, Mohammad Sidique Khan, had come to the attention of the police and MI5 at least nine times.

He and fellow bomber Shehzad Tanweer were observed meeting Omar Khayam, now a convicted terrorist, then the object of an MI5 terror investigation, three times. They were dismissed as "small-time fraudsters".

The report said: "Having taken everything into account, and having looked at all the evidence in considerable detail, we cannot criticise the judgments made by MI5 and the police based on the information they had and their priorities at the time." They were "understandable and reasonable".

It said there was "no specific confirmed intelligence" that a fifth bomber or a mastermind was directly involved in the attacks, but it was believed the bombers were "directed in some way by elements of al Qaeda based overseas".

The findings will leave the Government open to allegations of a whitewash, and calls for a public inquiry into the attacks intensified immediately after the report's publication.

But ISC chairman Kim Howells said: "There will inevitably be those who do not like what we have written, who will criticise the report because it does not say what they want it to say, but we cannot alter the facts to suit the story."

The report, titled Could 7/7 Have Been Prevented?, is the second such review and includes an "unprecedented level of operational detail".

It focuses on MI5 intelligence gleaned from an investigation called Operation Crevice, which took place in 2003 and 2004 and ultimately thwarted a fertiliser bomb plot in southeast England.

It said that to vigorously pursue every such target would be unfeasible given that there are more than 2000 people under suspicion in Britain.

It also said MI5 had foiled 12 terror plots targeting British sites.

"The attacks demonstrate there will always be gaps in intelligence coverage. It is an uncomfortable truth that, at some time in the future, without any prior warning, it is very possible that the UK will be the subject of another terrorist attack."


FACT OR FICTION?

Myth 1: A fax sent from MI5 to West Yorkshire Police with information about Mohammed Siddique Khan was lost or simply never replied to. Fact: No such fax existed. The security services do not use fax machines.

Myth 2: A police/MI5/Transport for London training exercise took place on the morning on July 7, 2005, to train for bomb attacks on the Tube. Fact: No such event was held on that day, but a police exercise, in which the scenario was bomb attacks on Tube stations, did take place on July 1 and 2, 2005.

Myth 3: Mohammed Siddique Khan was on an FBI "no fly list". Fact: He was not.

Myth 4: Mohammed Siddique Khan's car was bugged before the terror attacks. Fact: It was not. A tracking device was placed there on July 11, 2005, when he was already dead. When this was learned on July 12, the car was seized by the police.

Myth 5: CCTV footage of the bombers at Luton is not genuine. Fact: It had been said that the image looked doctored, but the report shows other images in the sequence which appear to prove it is genuine.

- INDEPENDENT