Two of the suicide bombers behind last year’s deadly London transport attacks likely had contacts with Al Qaeda, but British security lacked resources to stop the atrocity, said an official report on Thursday. The report, by an influential parliamentary committee, cleared intelligence services of any culpable failings in preventing the four bombers carrying out Britain’s worst terror attack, which killed them and 52 other people.In the first full account of the events before and after the July 7 blasts, the document said Mohammad Siddique Khan (30) and Shehzad Tanweer (22) had appeared only vaguely on Britain’s intelligence radar. They were considered peripheral figures at the time and were not pursued, with agents pre-occupied with “more pressing priorities”, the report found. Afterwards, it emerged they had been to Pakistan. Khan visited in 2003 and again, this time with Tanweer, between November 2004 and February 2005. “It has not yet been established who they met in Pakistan, but it is assessed as likely that they had some contact with Al Qaeda figures,” the 44-page report by the Intelligence and Security Committee said. The two men, whose identities were only established after July 7, probably received “operational training” there, it added.
Nevertheless, the committee’s chairman Paul Murphy said the intelligence services were not to blame. “There was no evidence that these two men were involved in attack planning against this country,” he told a press conference. “There was no culpable evidence of failure on the part of the agencies. Our view is that it was understandable that the leads were not taken any further. Things may have been different - but they may not have been.” He denied criticism that the report amounted to a whitewash.