The MI5 headquarters
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Britain’s Parliament to Investigate M15’s Failures
British parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee of MPs and Lords will hold inquiry into M15’s handling of intelligence, BBC News reported. It emerged that M15 could have detained suicide bombers long before the July 7, 2005 attacks but had taken no action against them.
The trial over five Brits of Arab origin completed on Monday, April 30. The defendants were given life sentences for a foiled plot to build a fertilizer bomb and explode a big shopping center and a night club in early 2004.
When tailing that group of terrorists a year before the 7/7 attack, M15 spotted the links to future suicide bombers Mohammed Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer. But M15 decided those two were of no danger and took no action against them.
In July of 2005, however, Mohammed Sidique Khan, 30, and Shehzad Tanweer, 22, exploded the bombs in the London metro, which killed 52.
Of interest is that it is the second parliamentary probe into the M15 actions initiated in the wake of this year’s news. Both Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer were in the field of M15’s vision in November 2004 and February 2005 when visiting militants training bases in Pakistan. But M15 had no resources to adequately evaluate their importance that time, M15 acknowledged to legislators.
www.kommersant.com
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