Posted on 07/13/2005 12:31:27 AM PDT by Gengis Khan
LONDON: The men who attacked the British capital last Thursday may have been 'away day bombers' and some may be of Pakistani ethnicity, the British authorities have said, in a brand new colloquialism destined to add yet another signature phrase to the doleful lingo of 21st-century terrorist threats to world cities.
The revelation that the bombers probably traveled up to London on cheap, special-offer return train tickets from fringe British cities such as Leeds, in the Muslim and Pakistani-dominant region of West Yorkshire, came even as London Metropolitan police searched five homes in the area on Tuesday in a possible breakthrough in the investigation.
The main focus of the search in Leeds was understood at the time of going to press as an ordinary home inhabited by a Pakistani family. Met police commissioner Sir Ian Blair confirmed late on Tuesday that the "intelligence-led" operation was "directly connected to the outrages on Thursday."
The search of West Yorkshire homes, which also involved police commandeering a red car thought to be linked to London's multiple bomb blasts, came even as the British authorities promised a massive crackdown on radical Muslim clerics "inciting hatred".
On Monday, Prime Minister Tony Blair told the British parliament that new laws to catch people planning acts of terrorism would be fast-tracked into law, if police and security services confirmed that they needed extra powers to keep the UK safe.
Blair said it seemed highly likely the bombs had been planted by "Islamist extremist terrorists" of the kind responsible for 9/11 the Madrid bomb blasts of March 11, 2004.
Tuesday's prospects for a breakthrough in the biggest manhunt in European history came as the police commissioner appealed for public patience over the identification of the Londoners who tragically died in the four bomb blasts. "We will identify people as quickly as we can but this is the biggest crime scene in English history and we have got to get it right," Commissioner Blair said.
According to reports, a lone bomb-maker, using high-grade military explosives, may have been created all four devices to bring London to a halt.
The sophisticated military explosives are believed to have been smuggled into the UK from the Balkans.
The prime minister's determination to toughen Britain's terrorism laws appeared to chime with increasingly urgent public backing for a legislative shape-up-crack-down on potential terrorists. On Tuesday, a poll published in The Times, London, showed that a majority of the public would back tough new anti-terrorist measures.
The Populus poll revealed that 86 per cent of the lay public favoured giving the police draconian new powers to arrest people they suspect of planing terrorist acts.
A massive 61 per cent said they supported the introduction of controversial identity cards, which the government has so far, tried in vain to introduce in the face of entrenched hostility from politicians, press and the public.
London's workmanlike back-to-business attitude came into conflict on Tuesday morning with news that the US military had continued with an order banning thousands of its airforce men stationed in the UK to avoid London.
But, within hours of the British media and politicians reviling the US for refusing to stand "shoulder to shoulder" with the UK in defiance of the terrorist threat, American military authorities rescinded the order to personnel, most of whom are stationed at US Air Force units at RAF Mildenhall and RAF Lakenheath, in Suffolk, eastern England.
Angry Britons had complained the US appeared to be chickening out of supporting the UK, even though President George W. Bush insisted on Monday that the US was "working with our allies to share information and to prevent terrorists from obtaining weapons of mass destruction".
If that doesn't make people think, nothing will. It's war, not crime. And if the UK's hostile Muslim population isn't addressed, some future "scene" will make this one look like a child's sandbox.
"The sophisticated military explosives are believed to have been smuggled into the UK from the Balkans."
That would be the very place that the evil West helped the muslim side, wouldn't it?
Nice reward?
You just have to admit the media's hellbent on scaring the crap out of the reader. I've heard 2 or 3 versions of just one story, all designed to sensationalize the one event.
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