Technician says warned police over London bombers

LONDON, June 24 (Reuters) A British computer expert says he warned police in 2003 about the activities of two men who carried out last year's suicide bombings in London, media reported today.

Martin Gilbertson, 45, told The Guardian and the BBC he had gone to police in October 2003 about the men after becoming alarmed about anti-Western material being produced by an Islamic bookshop in West Yorkshire where he helped maintain computers.

He says he sent West Yorkshire Police a package including DVD material he had compiled for circulation by the bookshop, and a list of names including those of two of the bombers, Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer, who lived locally.

Gilbertson said he heard nothing more till after the July 7 bombings, when he contacted London's Metropolitan Police and was interviewed three times by two officers.

''I wish I could have had some access to MI5 (security service),'' Gilbertson told the Guardian. ''I probably could have got them in there, before the bombs went off.'' A West Yorkshire Police spokesman told the newspaper it was not possible to trace now what had happened to Gilbertson's mailing.

''It's impossible to say whether this made its way into the intelligence system, whether it was discounted as low-level intelligence or whether it was acted upon in some way,'' he said.

Scotland Yard said it could not comment on Gilbertson's claims.

A parliamentary report in May said British security services had come across both Khan and Tanweer before the attacks but did not believe they posed an urgent threat.

The blasts on three London underground trains and a bus killed 56 people, including Khan, Tanweer and two other bombers.

REUTERS SHB HT1432