3 out of 4 london bombers revealed

[Winston]

"This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

W. Churchill

[Lancer]

It could be the begining of the middle, or the middle of the beginning even, if you're a pessimist.

[Koyaanisqatsi]

(CNN) -- The explosive TATP has been found in an apartment in the English town of Leeds, three sources have told CNN, as an investigation into the London attacks spans Britain, Pakistan, the United States and now Egypt.

Investigators found TATP in the Leeds apartment rented by Magdy el-Nashar, an Egyptian biochemist detained in Cairo for questioning, one of the three sources told CNN.

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/07/16/london.attacks/

Hm. Why do I suddenly feel a bit better that a trained biochemist only provided them with conventional explosives?

[Az]

I think that there is way too much mistique connected with biochemistry. I mean, what did you expect him to do?

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Well, I certainly wouldn't expect some sort of genetically engineered superbug that the press keeps throwing out as the next big disaster, but there are plenty of pretty low-level things that somebody with a bit of training and a few resources can put together that would put a subway bombing to shame.

[Provost Harrison]

I also find it utterly f**king disgusting that these pieces of filth come from my home county as well and travelled down here to wreak death and destruction. Utterly disgusting and without honour...

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Lancer
True, but for the local populace, the local muslims are at hand.

The local populace is also well aware that British Muslims died in the attack.


So some bigots will take advantage of this to make racially or religiously motivated attacks- they're the kind of people who would have done so anyway.




A British Muslim killed by a suicide bomber:

[Lancer]

war is hell

[Ramo]

oddly, Juan Cole, Prof of Middle East studies at Univ of Michigan, widely quoted as an expert, had earlier PROVEN that the bombers could NOT be British muslims.

That's pretty damn unfair. He said that it was unlikely given the statement put out, not that it "could NOT" be the situation.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Lancer
war is hell

" L'enfer, c'est les autres."


Jean Paul Sartre


Although I am given hope by the unselfish actions of ordinary people and the members of the emergency services in the immediate aftermath of the bombings.

I thought, this is the worst thing I have ever seen. I am not very good in enclosed spaces at the best of times and we had to climb over bodies and body parts to try to help people and see who was still alive. I thought this is the end of the world, right here in this carriage, but you have to do your job.

Sergeant Steve Betts of the British Transport police.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlondon/story/0,16132,1524834,00.html

[Dr Strangelove]

I remember an interview some magazine did last year with a British muslim businessman. He denounced western bigotry and smuggly pointed out how different he was from what he thought the reporter expected a muslim to be. Then he talked about why he hated western culture and about how the west deserved what it was getting from the terrorists. He stated that even British miuslims like himself might become involved in terrorism, but added that they would not be involved in terrorism against British targets since as good muslims they would not violate the hospitality of their British hosts.

Evidently he was wrong. I'd like to see the reporter track him down and re-interview him now.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Ramo


That's pretty damn unfair. He said that it was unlikely given the statement put out, not that it "could NOT" be the situation.

"CNN ran a piece Saturday in the US with Peter Bergen, speculating on the "chilling" possibility that the bombers were Muslim British subjects with UK passports. I have to say that I was outraged and appalled by this piece of potentially destructive speculation. [I have now seen a copy of the transcript and am sorry to say I misheard this report; it was about the danger to the US of radicalized European Muslims, not an allegation that British Muslims committed the July 7 attack. Apologies to Mr. Bergen and CNN. - 7/11/2005].

First, we still have no idea who did this. It is very likely the "Qaeda al-Jihad in Europe" group that claimed responsibility immediately. Their statement appeared very quickly after the bombings and yet had none of the appearance of being rushed. That suggests it was carefully composed before the fact. The rumors that the statement has errors in the Arabic or the Quran citation are absolutely incorrect, and al-Sharq al-Awsat came to the same conclusion in its Saturday edition.

The statement was in Arabic. The instances of British Muslim participation in terrorism given in the CNN piece were all non-Arabs: Richard Reid and several South Asian British, all of whom undertook operations abroad rather than in the UK. None of them probably even knew Arabic well or could compose a statement in it. Britain's South Asian Muslim community is almost certainly not the origin of this attack. The statement celebrated Arabness or `urubah along with Islam. No Bangladeshi-Briton or Pakistani-Briton wrote that.

The statement was probably not written by a second-generation Arab Briton or even by a long-term, integrated Arab Briton resident.

So, if the statement is a guide to the identity of the attackers, this bombing could not have emanated from the British Muslim community.

I did a keyword search in OCLC Worldcat, an electronic database with 40 million volumes, for `urubah and Islam. Virtually all of the hits came from Egyptian Muslim thinkers publishing in Cairo and Giza during the past 30 years, roughly in a Muslim Brotherhood tradition. Egyptian Muslim revivalist intellectual Muhammad Amara wrote the big book on Uruba and Islam. Likewise, there was a book on Islam and uruba in Darfur, presumably supporting the Sudanese government (the Fur of Darfur are Muslims and often know Arabic, and the Arabic-speaking Sudanese living there are a minority, with whom the Fur will intermarry. The Arabic speakers, who look just like the Fur in being black Africans, have engaged in predations against the Fur in the past few years, with tens of thousands killed, even as some of the Fur sought greater regional autonomy from Khartum).

My guess is that the author of the statement is Egyptian or Sudanese, with some sort of intellectual genealogy in the radical fringes of the Muslim Brotherhood, perhaps al-Zawahiri's al-Jihad al-Islami.

Of course, all of this is premised on the statement being a guide to the perpetrators, which we cannot know for sure. But everything else above follows pretty tightly if it is."


You're right, he does enough caveating to leave himself an out. After giving 5 paragraphs arguing that it WAS non Brits, and indicated he was outraged and appalled at someone indicating it was POSSIBLE that it was.

Why does it seem to me that Juan Coles rhetorical techniques perfectly mirror those of the administration types he decries?

[Ted Striker]

So when do they hit America? It's only a matter of time...