Hunting the London bombers, shooting an innocent man

Jul 27th 2005
From The Economist Global Agenda

London's police have admitted that the suspected suicide-bomber they gunned down on an Underground train was an innocent Brazilian man, unconnected with the latest round of bombing attacks on the city's public-transport system. Police are still urgently seeking three of four main suspects seen on security cameras at the scenes of the bombings

A FORTNIGHT after the four explosions that killed 56 people, Londoners’ reputation for “getting on with it” in spite of threats to their safety was put to the test again. At lunchtime on Thursday July 21st the city’s transport system was hit by explosions at four points—three almost simultaneous blasts on the London Underground and a fourth on a bus, the same as in the July 7th attacks. This time the explosions were small—it is believed that only the bombs’ detonators may have exploded, not their main explosive charges—and the results were far less devastating. No-one was killed and the sight of bloodied commuters emerging from Underground stations was mercifully absent.

Immediately, a huge manhunt, perhaps London's biggest ever, was launched—with the tragic outcome of police shooting dead a man that they had chased on to an Underground train at Stockwell station in south London, believing him to be a suicide-bomber. On Friday morning, the man was followed by plain-clothes detectives as he left an apartment block that had been under surveillance and boarded a bus bound for the station. He was said to be wearing an unusually thick coat for a summer's day. The police, who have reportedly been given secret new shoot-to-kill orders to prevent suicide-bombs being detonated, cornered him in a carriage of the train and, in front of terrified passengers, shot him repeatedly in the head.

However, on Saturday, they admitted it had all been an appalling mistake and that the man—a Brazilian electrician who had been living in London for several years—was not involved in the bombings. It emerged later that he may have fled from the police because his visa had expired.
What police called the “tragedy” of the wrongful shooting has overshadowed several breakthroughs in the hunt for the perpetrators of the second round of attacks (the first group, of course, were killed by their bombs). On Wednesday, police confirmed they had arrested one of four prime suspects, whose images had been captured at the scenes of the latest bombings—on trains at Oval, Warren Street and Shepherd's Bush stations, and on a bus in Bethnal Green.

The arrested man was named as Yassin Hassan Omar, a Somalian-born man sought in connection with the Warren Street attack. Several other arrests have been made, though the other three main suspects have not yet been found. A fifth bomb was found in bushes a mile or so from the scene of the Shepherd's Bush explosion, similar to those left on the bus and tube trains by the bombers. It too was packed in a plastic food container manufactured in India and sold in around 100 shops in Britain.

This time, unlike in the first round of attacks, central London’s public-transport system was not shut down, though there was considerable disruption, with Underground lines suspended (some had still not re-opened since the first round of bombings) and areas of the city cordoned off. Whereas the previous attacks came during the morning rush, the latest ones took place in the middle of the day when fewer people are using public transport.

However, the most important factor contributing to the lack of casualties this time was the small size of the explosions. The apparent failure of the devices’ main explosive charge means that only sheer good fortune, or the incompetence of the bombers, prevented further great loss of life.

If the bombers this time were members of the same group of Islamist suicide-bombers who carried out the previous attacks, the analysis of the unexploded material and any other bomb components recovered from the scenes of the blasts might help police discover more about who organised and supplied both sets of attackers. Some reports have indicated similarities between the bombs used in both sets of attacks.

More details have emerged about the four suicide-bombers who struck on July 7th, three of whom were British-born Muslims of Pakistani origin and the fourth a Muslim convert born in Jamaica—all of them leading seemingly normal lives until they blew themselves up. Some of them had visited Pakistan, where they may have had contact with Islamist militants possibly linked to al-Qaeda. This discovery has prompted the Pakistani security forces to launch crackdowns against Islamist extremists. Several hundred suspected militants have been arrested and the authorities say some will be tried under the country's terrorism law.

Since the previous attacks, there has been much discussion in Britain about how to stop the recruiting of young Muslims to carry out such attacks. Earlier last week, the prime minister invited Muslim leaders to 10 Downing St in an effort to find ways of identifying potential troublemakers before they come under the thrall of Islamist extremists and start acquiring explosives and training for attacks.

But British Muslims are increasingly isolated from their self-appointed leaders and may not heed their words anyway. In an attempt to win their co-operation, Sir Ian insisted on Friday that the police crackdown was “targeted against criminals...not against any community”. However, his officers' shooting of an apparently innocent man may undermine any hopes of improved co-operation—though things would have been far worse had he turned out to have been a Muslim.

The prime minister, after consulting with opposition leaders, has proposed a further round of anti-terror laws, on top of those passed, often in the face of strong parliamentary resistance, since the 2001 attacks in America. A new offence of “acts preparatory to terrorism” will cover those who try to get hold of explosives and other dangerous material. Showing others how to commit atrocities will also be outlawed. Another proposed law would ban indirect incitement to terrorism. And, in future, foreign clerics condoning terrorism are likely to be banned from visiting Britain. Police chiefs have called for further powers to apprehend suspects.

However, stringent measures are already in place in Britain so it is unclear how much reassurance such new laws would give the public. Worse, there is a risk that, if such laws are hastily drawn up and indiscriminately applied, they would further alienate young British Muslims. If so, they could be every bit as counterproductive as some of the measures introduced by past British governments, supposedly to prevent Irish republican terrorism, which only served as a recruiting-sergeant for the IRA.

Copyright © 2005 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.