The Al Qaeda Factor: Plots Against the West

Chapter 7: Operation Theseus (London, July 7, 2005)

C h a p t e r 7 Operation Theseus (London, July 7, 2005) the july 7, 2005, London transit bombings were a series of coordinated bomb blasts that hit London’s public transport system during the morning rush hour. At 8:50 a.m., three bombs exploded within fifty seconds of each other on three London Underground trains. A fourth bomb exploded on a bus nearly an hour later in Tavistock Square. The bombings killed fiftytwo commuters and the four suicide bombers, injured seven hundred, and caused a severe day-long disruption of the city’s transport infrastructure countrywide. The Beeston/Dewsbury (Leeds) Scene The South Asian (Pakistani) community in Northern England is dominated by individuals of Kashmiri descent. As a result, from a social and political perspective, this diaspora community has a keen interest in events occurring in the Indian subcontinent. As Mohammed Siddique Khan’s associate, Wahid Ali, noted, “In the area that we live in Beeston is all Kashmiri really and, I don’t know, I can always remember when I used to go the Jum’ah prayer they were always doing collection and everything for the Kashmiri people, the Kashmiri cause and people talking about it.” It is not surprising then that significant numbers of British Muslims were drawn to either actively or passively endorse jihad abroad in Kashmir: supporting the Kashmiri fighters was an “Islamic obligation” as well as a heroic, romantic cause.1 108 Al Qaeda“Suggested/Endorsed”Plots Moreover, for this community in northern England, supporting “resistance to occupied Kashmir” dovetailed with other ongoing armed struggles involving Muslims in Bosnia, Chechnya, the Middle East, and Afghanistan, and thus young men in the community were vulnerable to polarization. Furthermore, familial links to relatives in conflict zones enabled travel, further radicalization, and training. As Wahid Ali testified, there was nothing uncommon in the community about going to train in Pakistan: “Islamically and morally I think it’s 100 per cent, if you want help your Muslim brothers , correct. . . . A lot of brothers used to go to Kashmir training camps. It’s just the whole romantic idea of going there, training, helping your brothers, because we all used to just come back. Out of a hundred per cent, I reckon or ninety per cent would come back.”2 In and around the Beeston/Dewsbury scene, Mohammed Siddique Khan was leading and participating in Outward Bound–type activities, such as paintball outings and hiking and camping trips to Wales and the Lake District with youth groups from the Leeds area. These events served as bonding and vetting opportunities and were often preceded by Islamist-themed lectures. The paintball sessions were preceded by meetings at participants’ homes during which the group would gather to watch graphic videos before engaging in the physically rigorous and warlike action games.3 It is believed that through one of these outings, Khan met Germaine Lindsay.4 Wahid Ali testified that he had participated in a number of these outings.5 Local younger men of South Asian descent also spent time at the local community center, the Hamara Healthy Living Centre, in Beeston, playing pool, boxing, and “hanging out.” Extremists often used the club as a venue to proliferate their radical messages to the more susceptible youth. Violent jihad was a frequent topic of discussion at the club. In fact, one of the gyms in the area was known as “the al Qaeda gym” because of its significant extremist membership.6 The seven men associated with this plot (Mohammed Siddique Khan, Shehzad Tanweer, Hasib Hussain, Germaine Lindsay, Wahid Ali, Sadeer Saleem, and Mohammed Shakil) emerged from three overlapping social networks: a community-based vigilante group, the Mullah Boys; experiences at militant Kashmiri training camps in Pakistan; and links to extremist networks in London, including members of the Operation Crevice plot. Mohammed Siddique Khan was the most deeply involved with these networks as he had friendships with a variety of al Muhajiroun and Crevice individuals such as the al Qaeda facilitator—Mohammed Qayyum Khan OperationTheseus (London, July 7, 2005) 109 (aka “Q”), Crevice plotters—Mohammed Junaid Babar, Omar Khyam, Salahuddin Amin—and future British suicide bombers Omar Sharif and Asif Hanif, who traveled to Israel to attack the Mike’s Place bar in Tel Aviv. An important node in the London-based Islamist scene that Mohammed Siddique Khan, Shehzad Tanweer, and Germaine Lindsay had had visited occasionally was the Finsbury Park...