Unwinding the string of clues from a crime scene is a painstakingly slow and complex task. This is especially the case if the crime scene covers an area of over 10 km in length and involves hundreds of forensic analysts and detectives.
Every finger-print, mobile phone, clothing remnant, shreds of documents, battery fragments and hours of CCTV footage may lead to that “golden clue” that will reveal the source of the 7/7 deadly London blasts.
In Madrid, it was a mobile telephone SIM card that led officials to those responsible for last year’s train blast that killed 191 people. In Lockerbie, Scotland, a fragment from a shirt led investigators to the masterminds behind the bombing of PanAm Flight 103, reported the ABC.
In London, investigators are sifting through the wreckage of rat-infested tube tunnels and even the bodies of victims.
Although a harrowing task, it has so far yielded the discovery of key evidence – ID cards of two suspects, which prompted the police to connect them to the other two suicide-bombers.
Documents of Mohammad Khan, aged 30, were found at the Edgware station blast site where six people were killed. The ID card of Hasib Hussain, aged 18, was found at No. 30 bus wreckage, where 13 people died. Forensic analysis of victims from the Aldgate blast identified the third man – Shehzad Tanweer, aged 22. All three were from Beeston, lived in the same community and boarded the London-bound train at 7.20am on July 7 from Luton, after driving to the station in a rented car.
The fourth man was a little different from the rest and he did not come from Beeston. Germaine Lindsay, aged 19, was a Jamaican-born man living in Buckinghamshire and is believed to have carried out the King’s Cross attack that killed 26 people. His link to the other three is still unclear.
CCTV footage released on Sunday showed the four men joking as they boarded the Thameslink train in Luton. Police described them as “happy hikers” carrying heavy backpacks. Minutes later they would be dead, taking with them many innocent lives.
Looking for Clues on Tapes
Since the 7/7 blasts police have examined some 6000 CCTV tapes with thousands of hours of footage, desperate to find more clues. Were the men working alone, or is there a surviving mastermind who is still at large? What were their last minutes before the deadly explosions?
The police were given a nudge in the right direction when the worried mother of Hussein called in to report her son missing. More importantly she also gave the names of his three friends, whom accompanied him to London.
This is now known as the “phone-call theory” and can perhaps explain the speed with which police moved to identify the bombers and pursue anyone connected with them.
Cash cards and a driving licence belonging to Hussain were found among the ruins of the No.30 bus. Documents belonging to Khan and Tanweer were also discovered at the Underground bomb sites. Linsday was identified by DNA analysis as he was too disfigured and had no documents.
On Monday last week the police, trawling through CCTV footage, found Hussein standing with the others at King’s Cross station before separating for their deadly missions.
DNA Analysis Leads to Bomb Factory
The documents and DNA from the bodies of the four men led the authorities to their Leeds “bomb factory”. The rented house was raided and a bath full of triacetone triperoxide, a raw material for explosives which is available from chemists, was discovered.
The next link in the chain was the apprehension in Cairo of Magdi Elnashar, allegedly the chemist behind the factory and who has been linked to the Leeds house where the explosives were found.
Although the jig-saw puzzle may be coming together, it may be moths before a full picture is re-created. Police are now calling on the public to provide more evidence in the form of mobile phone pictures or video footage, which may give more clues. So far over 500 witnesses have been interviewed.
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