The 7/7 London Underground Bombing, Not So Homegrown: A Selection from: The Evolution of the Global Terrorist

By Bruce Hoffman

An analysis of the suicide attacks against London transportation targets that killed 56 people and injured hundreds, by the author of Inside Terrorism.

 


It was among the most important operations directed by core al Qaeda leaders in years following the events of September 11, 2001. Initially, the incident was dismissed by the authorities, pundits, and the media as the work of amateur terrorists—untrained, self-selected and self-radicalized, "bunches of guys" acting on their own with no links to any terrorist organization.


 


Evidence presented here, however, reveals a clear link between the bombers and the highest levels of the al Qaeda senior command, then based in the lawless border area separating Afghanistan and Pakistan. Written by the author of Inside Terrorism, this chapter is part of the Columbia Studies series that examines major terrorist acts and campaigns undertaken in the decade following 9/11.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jul 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9780231538862

Book preview

The 7/7 London Underground Bombing: Not So Homegrown

Bruce Hoffman

A selection from The Evolution of the Global Terrorist Threat: From 9/11 to Osama bin Laden's Death, edited by Bruce Hoffman and Fernando Reinares

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Scholarly research for this volume was made possible with a generous grant from the Real Instituto Elcano, Madrid, and the Center for Security Studies and Security Studies Program, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.

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Cover design by Noah Arlow after an original design by Elliot Strunk / Fifth Letter

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Contents

The 7 July 2005 London Bombings

Notes

The 7 July 2005 London Bombings

Both at the time of the July 7, 2005, London bombing attacks and since then, a misconception has often been perpetuated that this was entirely an organic or homegrown phenomenon of self-radicalized, self-selected terrorists.¹ Indeed, British authorities initially believed that the attacks were the work of disaffected British Muslims: self-radicalized and self-selected, operating only within the United Kingdom and entirely on their own.² Newspaper accounts repeatedly quoted unnamed security sources using the term clean skins to describe the bombers: a shorthand of sorts meaning that they had no prior convictions or known terrorist involvement.³ In the Cabinet Office on the day of the bombing, a senior intelligence officer’s suggestion that al-Qaeda was behind the attacks was reportedly laughed at and dismissed as absurd.⁴ That morning, Scotland Yard’s deputy assistant commissioner, Brian Paddick, told a press conference, As far as I am concerned, Islam and terrorists are two words that do not go together.⁵ And in an interview on BBC Radio 4 on the morning after the bombings, Home Secretary Charles Clarke stated that the attacks had come out of the blue, suggesting that the bombings were some spontaneous outburst of rage and anger manifested in an act of extreme violence that could not have been anticipated or prevented.⁶

Such arguments were widely cited in support of the then-fashionable contention that entirely homegrown threats had superseded those posed by al-Qaeda and that al-Qaeda was no longer a consequential, active terrorist force. Accordingly, many analysts and government officials concluded that the threat from al-Qaeda had in fact receded and that the main security challenge emanated completely from unaffiliated, self-selected, and self-radicalized individuals. The evidence that has come to light since the 2005 London attacks, however, points to precisely the opposite conclusion: that al-Qaeda was and is alive and kicking and that it has been actively planning, supporting, and directing terrorist attacks on a global canvas since at least 2004 and was certainly behind the 2005 London bombings.⁷ Hence, rather than an organic, entirely homegrown plot perpetrated by clean skins acting entirely on their own, al-Qaeda’s involvement—and that of other terrorist organizations—is crystal clear.

The Bombings

At 8:50 a.m. on Thursday morning, July 7, 2005, three bombs exploded within fifty seconds of one another on three different London Underground (subway) trains.⁸ One explosion occurred on an eastbound Circle line train traveling from Liverpool Street