Britain’s security services could not have prevented the 2005 London suicide attacks because they lacked the resources to investigate the plot’s ringleader properly, a report by senior parliamentarians stated yesterday.
Indeed, the domestic spy agency MI5 could only properly track about 6 per cent of those suspected of involvement in terrorism a year before the bombings, the parliamentary intelligence and security committee said.
In a report containing unprecedented detail about the work of MI5, the committee said the head of the service had admitted that even now, with greater resources, they could only “hit the crocodiles nearest the boat”.
Mohammad Sidique Khan, the ringleader of the July 7th bombings which killed 52, had been watched, photographed and recorded by surveillance operatives a number of times after 2001.
But the committee declined to fault MI5, saying Khan had not been considered a big enough threat to devote limited manpower. The report, the second the committee has carried out into the attacks, said “astounding figures” showed that more than 60 per cent of MI5’s targets at the time had coverage described as either “inadequate” or “none”.
The committee noted the security services had thwarted 12 terrorist plots since 2000 which could have resulted in loss of life “in some cases on a massive scale”. It warned that another successful attack was likely. – (Reuters)