Expert fears explosives came from military
GETHIN CHAMBERLAIN AND JAMES KIRKUP
THE bombs which blew apart three Tube trains and a bus in London last week were probably made from military explosives, a senior French counter-terrorism official claimed yesterday.
Christophe Chaboud, the head of the French Anti-Terrorism Co-ordination Unit, said the explosives could have come from the Balkans or may have been sourced from a military establishment by someone on the inside.
Mr Chaboud, one of five top officials sent by Paris to London immediately after Thursday's attacks, said: "The explosives appear to be of military origin, which is very worrying."
The claim was made as attention focused on five men (profiled above) whose names have been linked with the terrorist attacks, and who include Mohamed Gerbouzi, a convicted bomber who is believed to be at large in London.
Investigators are said to be struggling to make headway in their search for the bombers, with Britain turning to other countries for help after failing to make an initial breakthrough.
The consensus is that the attack was the work of Islamic extremist terrorists and the names of a number of suspects have been reported, but security sources have poured scorn on suggestions that they already have a firm list of those in the frame.
"Right now, everything flows from the forensics - we're looking for the evidence we'll use to find them and then convict them," one source said. "So far, we have made no arrests, no raids, no extradition requests - we're just not at that stage yet."
As the hunt for the bombers continued police were X-raying bodies to see if any bomb parts or timing devices, which could be vital clues, were embedded in them.
Police are hoping that the 2,500 closed-circuit television tapes may yet yield footage of the bombers and Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, appealed for people to give his officers time.
He described the areas of investigation as "the biggest crime scenes in English history" and added: "We have got to get this right."
But he insisted that the police would be "implacable" in tracking down the people responsible: "We know we have the support of Londoners and people around the world to solve this terrible crime," he said. "These people will be caught."
Every square centimetre of the tunnels as well as the trains had to be scrutinised, he said, which was a lengthy process. Officers also had to follow up 2,000 calls to the anti-terrorist hotline as well as 115,000 calls to the casualty bureau.
Andy Trotter, deputy chief constable of the British Transport Police, said the conditions were slowly improving in Russell Square with better ventilation causing the temperature to drop inside the tunnel.
Underlying the absence of any firm leads, Scotland Yard at the weekend convened an unusual gathering of international police and intelligence officers to discuss the case. "There was a meeting, but it didn't tell us anything," said one European police officer yesterday. "We offered any help we could, but the British don't know what they're looking for so they couldn't say what they need from us."
MI5 and GCHQ analysts are understood to be sifting through thousands of intercepted e-mails and phone records picked up in the weeks and months before the attacks, trying to detect patterns and clues that could lead the way to the bombers or their associates.
As well as material collected by GCHQ, the investigation is drawing on the ECHELON network, a signals intelligence-sharing agreement between Britain, the United States, Australia and New Zealand.
The slow progress of the intelligence review is not caused by a lack of raw data, but rather the difficulty of plucking out a tiny number of potentially significant fragments from an almost limitless pool of intercepted material.
"The problem isn't that there is too little information, it's that there is too much," said one source. "There is an ocean of information out there, and more just pours in every day. No matter what the resources we can throw at it, it's always going to be a huge task."
Yesterday, security officials in Poland searched the home of a British citizen of Pakistani origin in the eastern city of Lublin in connection with the bombings, but he was not detained. Three British men were also held under the Terrorism Act after they arrived at Heathrow Airport from abroad, but sources said they were not being linked to the terrorist attacks and they were released.
As police continued to sift through the CCTV images yesterday, one terrorism expert predicted pictures of the bombers may be available within a fortnight.
Dr Andrew Silke based his estimate on the previous case of the London nail bomber David Copeland. He was identified by his boss and a cab driver after police released an image taken from a CCTV tape outside Brixton station in south London on the day he planted his first bomb in April 1999.
Dr Silke, a criminologist, said: "It took just over three weeks to find David Copeland from CCTV and there was less footage available. I think police will identify these bombers in a similar time because the systems involved are much better.
"We should within two weeks have those pictures released to the media - at least some images of some of the bombers."
Unconfirmed reports that security cameras aboard the No 30 bus which blew up in Tavistock Square were defective would, if true, be a serious blow to the investigation, he said.
"It is a real pity as these would have been the easiest ones from which to identify the bomber," he said.
"That is a real loss. The good thing about the Tube's system is that it has so many cameras and even if a couple were down it will still be on there somewhere. It will take a lot longer to analyse images from the Tube, however."
