On July 7, 2005, a terrorist attack unfolded in London when four separate suicide bombers set off explosives across the city. Three bombs detonated in the vicinity of underground stations and one went off on a bus, killing 52 people and injuring more than 770.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]“It was like opening the gates of hell,” Dan Biddle, a survivor, recalls in a new documentary series, Attack On London: Hunting the 7/7 Bombers. The Netflix series details the events of 7/7 through witness testimony, families of victims, and those who aided the investigation, including former MI5 Director General Eliza Manningham-Buller, and even former Prime Minister Tony Blair. While the title references the 7/7 bombings, the four-episode series also investigates the attempted bombings that happened two weeks later, on July 21, and the ensuing country-wide manhunt to find those responsible. It also covers a fatal police error that took an innocent life.
The aftermath of the 7/7 attacks
All four of the bombers were killed in the attacks, which left the police scrambling to try and discover their identities. They combed through endless footage of tens of thousands of people coming and going through various underground stations throughout the city. A breakthrough in the search occurred when a worker found footage of four men carrying massive backpacks walking together in the station. With four men committing four bombings across the city, this provided a blueprint for the investigation. Footage traced the men back to Luton, about 32 miles north of King’s Cross station, near one of the explosions. Their car, a Nissan Micra, was still parked at that station. Inside the car were a number of small homemade explosive devices—they had found the attackers.
One of the suspects, Hasib Hussain, was just 18 and living with his family in Leeds, in the north of England. Despite living with his family, he was renting a property of his own. The property was full of materials to build explosives. The house gave the investigation new forensics—biometrics including fingerprints and cellphone data. It helped them identify all four bombers: Mohammad Sidique Khan, Shehzad Tanweer, Hasib Hussain, and Jermaine Lindsay. They were all British-born and raised—people within British society who wanted to cause harm. The small town of Beeston came under police investigation as they tried to understand how these men were radicalized into murderers. They uncovered various videotapes, one of which had Mohammad Sidique Khan saying that “We are at war, and I am a soldier. Now you too will taste the reality of this situation.”
The forensics investigation found that there were no traces of the kinds of bombs that police expected to find, meaning that they were dealing with a whole new way of making explosive devices. They discovered that the attackers used a mixture of piperine, which comes from ground-up black peppercorns, and hydrogen peroxide. Both are readily available materials.
Attack on London questions the effectiveness of MI5, the UK’s domestic intelligence service. Two of the terrorists, as the show alleges, were known by MI5—Mohammad and Shezhad. But they were not considered high enough priority to be tracked intensely. If they had, perhaps they would have known that in 2004, the pair went to Pakistan to train with the terrorist organization Al-Qaeda, where they became militarized and were convinced to attack Britain.
The 7/21 Attacks
Two weeks after the terrorist attacks on 7/7, four more attempted suicide bombers attacked various areas of the city: Oval, Warren Street, Hackney, and Shepherd’s Bush. This time, the explosions were unsuccessful, and nobody was killed or injured. This meant that the attackers all survived the explosions, and the manhunt to find the failed suicide bombers was on.
A critical breakthrough came in a gym membership found at the scene of an explosion belonging to one Hussain Osman. Police were able to get a positive ID by contacting the gym and found his address. The police believed it was likely that the terrorists were convening at the address. The home went under intense surveillance, but there was an issue when there was a lapse in surveillance—he left his post briefly to urinate. A potential suspect emerged, and while they were following him, they were unable to get a proper ID: all they had to go on was a blurry, blown-up photo of the gym membership.
While trailing the potential suspect, he got on the bus. He made his way to Stockwell station. They were ordered to stop him from getting on the tube, but they were already in the station, so they couldn’t hear the radio. Another police squad was ordered by Police Chief Cressida Dick not to let the man on the tube. That squad was told they would only be asked to intervene once they had confirmed that the man they were following was Osman. As the man had already got on the train at Stockwell station in South London, they took the order as confirmation that the man was indeed the terrorist. The armed officers got on the train and shot the man five times, killing him. However, the man did not have a suspected explosive device, and they discovered they had the wrong man: an ID revealed this was Jean Charles de Menezes, a completely innocent civilian. Dick, who gave the order not to let the man on the train, declined to be interviewed for the series.
After that fatal mistake that cost the life of de Menezes, the manhunt for the four suspects continued. The investigation lost track of all four bombers, which led to the public release of images of the men. It risked alerting the assailants that they were being hunted, but they felt they were out of options, and using the power of the public could be what they needed to turn the tide of the search. The investigation also monitored several communication devices, including cell phones, one of which the police suspected belonged to Hussain Osman. This led to the discovery that Osman travelled on the Eurostar to Paris using a false passport. That phone went dead when Osman left London.
On July 23, 2007, the 3rd day of the manhunt, the police received a phone call from a man who believed that one of the released images was his own son, and identified Muktar Said as one of the terrorists. The next day, they got a call from an apartment manager of North London’s Curtis House, who could identify Yassin Oman, the Warren Street bomber, as a resident of the building. They now had a positive ID on three of the four bombers. When the police went to Oman’s apartment, they found a kitchen that had been used to create explosives. They also found ties to Finsbury Park Mosque and its leader, Abu Hamza, a radical preacher who encouraged violence. Hamza is currently serving a life prison sentence in New York.
On July 26, the sixth day of the manhunt, police received a call from a landlord that Oman was residing in Birmingham, about 120 miles north of London. CCTV footage revealed that Oman disguised himself in a burka to travel out of London. When police got to his house, he was standing in a bathtub wearing a large backpack, suggesting he was armed with an explosive. However, he wasn’t and police were able to detain him.
The public was vital in the hunt for the London 7/21 bombers. Another call identified the last attacker as Ramzi Mohammed. This led the police to a raid on his address at Dalgarno Gardens in West London on July 29 where they made a surprising discovery: not only was Mohammed in the flat, but so was Said. With three suspects in police custody, only Hussain Osman remained at large. Police finally caught him after Osman, who had relatives in Italy, put an Italian SIM card in his cell phone and was able to be tracked. After an eight-day manhunt, all four bombers from the 7/21 attacks were in police custody.
The killing of an innocent civilian
The killing of Jean Charles de Menezes angered many across the UK, horrified that the police would use force to kill a completely innocent man. At the time, police tried to paint de Menezes as someone who resisted and refused to comply, implying they had no choice but to shoot him. But Attack on London features testimony from the officer (who remains anonymous) who shot de Menezes, and he says this is completely untrue. Though reports first suggested de Menezes leapt over the ticket barriers, causing the police to chase him, the testimony clarifies this was not the case: He went through the station normally, and it was the police who jumped the barriers. The officer claims full responsibility for his actions and the death of de Menezes.
At the end of Attack on London, title cards reveal that while an inquest into the 7/7 attacks made serious criticism of MI5, they ultimately found no evidence that MI5 could have prevented the bombings. The inquest jury also rejected the police’s claim that the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes was lawful. No officers were prosecuted or found individually responsible for the shooting. In a 2007 trial, the Metropolitan Police Service was found guilty of breaking health and safety laws and endangering the public. It was fined £175,000.
The 7/21 bombers were convicted of conspiracy to murder, and each received a minimum 40-year prison sentence.
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