Friday, July 15, 2005
Juan Cole On The Possible Khan-London Connection
Cole knows full well the import of the charge that Bush's grandstanding terror arrests in August of last year may have led to the London bombings in July of this year. Which is why he carefully lays out the evidence for this charge in a calm, logical manner. UPDATE: In his very next post, Cole states the following:
The French newspaper Liberation has revealed that the fourth suicide bomber in the July 7 attacks was Lindsey Jermaine. Although the French thought he might be English, he is a Briton of Caribbean heritage.If it can be proved for certain that one of the London bombers was one of the men who got away last August because Bush blew the UK's surveillance program, there will be hell to pay in Great Britain.
The French also have also alleged about the roundup of al-Qaeda last summer (see below) that:
"Out of "the 13 presumed terrorists identified by the British only 8 were arrested and 5 escaped. The arrests were part of an operation which recovered 600kg of explosives," said the senior French police officer, who yesterday revealed to Libération the fact that amongst the five who escaped from the operation was Mohammed Kahn, one of the alleged suicide bombers who struck on the London Underground. This Briton of Pakistani descent has been on the list of Scotland Yard's "targets" for the last 15 months, only with a different age and a different first name - Kayoun* instead of Sidique, but "it's the same man" who gave the police the slip."
If Mohammad Sadique Khan had been named by Noor Khan in Pakistan, and managed to escape British surveillance because the Bush administration splashed details of an ongoing investigation all over the press to throw John Kerry into the shade, that really is criminal.
The initial French statements by Interior Minister Nicholas Sarkozy were reported a little inaccurately, so that he looked as though he were saying that the British police had had the four bombers in custody last year. That would have made the British police look like dangerous incompetents and it elicited a sharp rebuke from British Interior Minister Richard Clark. [Sarkozy mentions "March of 2004" but appears to have the date wrong. The arrest of 8 of 13 suspects came in August after Noor Khan's name was leaked.)
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