British spies watched bombers a year before attacks
30 Apr 2007 11:13:52 GMT
Source: Reuters
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By Michael Holden and Mark Trevelyan
LONDON, April 30 (Reuters) - Counter-terrorism spies took photographs and recorded conversations of two British suicide bombers well over a year before they carried out their attacks, but concluded at the time they did not pose a major threat.
The two men, Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer, surfaced as unidentified contacts of a group of men under surveillance by the MI5 intelligence agency and suspected of planning attacks in Britain using fertiliser-based explosives.
Five of those men were convicted on Monday in Britain's longest terrorism trial, and media were allowed for the first time to report on court papers detailing how Khan and Tanweer were observed by MI5 as it tracked the fertiliser gang in February and March 2004.
Their publication looked certain to revive a debate over whether MI5 missed vital clues that could have enabled it to prevent the suicide bombings of July 7, 2005, in which Khan, Tanweer and two other young British Muslims blew themselves up on three London underground trains and a bus, killing 52 people.
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