British spies watched bombers a year before attacks

LONDON, Apr 30 (Reuters) Counter-terrorism spies took photographs and recorded conversations of two British suicide bombers well over a year before they carried out their attacks, but concluded at the time they did not pose a major threat.

The two men, Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer, surfaced as unidentified contacts of a group of men under surveillance by the MI5 intelligence agency and suspected of planning attacks in Britain using fertiliser-based explosives.

Five of those men were convicted today in Britain's longest terrorism trial, and media were allowed for the first time to report on court papers detailing how Khan and Tanweer were observed by MI5 as it tracked the fertiliser gang in February and March 2004.

Their publication looked certain to revive a debate over whether MI5 missed vital clues that could have enabled it to prevent the suicide bombings of July 7, 2005, in which Khan, Tanweer and two other young British Muslims blew themselves up on three London underground trains and a bus, killing 52 people.

''They had them in the palm of their hand and they chose to let them go,'' said Rachel North, who was on board a train that was blown up near King's Cross underground station.

Referring to repeated demands for a public inquiry, which the government has so far refused, she told Reuters: ''I think it's something that will never go away until all the questions are answered.'' A security source told Reuters: ''With the intelligence, resources and other priorities we had at the time, we made the right decisions. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.'' BUGGED CAR The court papers, citing testimony from an informant, said Khan had attended a militant training camp in Pakistan in 2003 with some members of the fertiliser gang.

According to the documents, visual and audio surveillance by British security services showed Khan with Omar Khyam, the group's suspected ringleader, and his brother on four occasions in Britain in early 2004. On three of these, Tanweer was also present.

The last time was when all four were travelling in a car on March 23, 2004, one week before the fertiliser plotters were arrested.

The security source said there was nothing in the surveillance to indicate Khan and Tanweer knew of the fertiliser plot or were interested in launching attacks in Britain, even if they showed a general sympathy with ''overseas jihadist activity'' and discussed financial scams such as credit card fraud.

''If Mohammad Sidique Khan and Tanweer had been involved in conversations about the fertiliser plot or terrorism in the UK, both of those men would have been put into the top category'' for further surveillance, he said.

''No such conversations took place, and no such intelligence was obtained.'' The pair were seen as peripheral figures in what at the time was Britain's biggest counter-terrorism operation, involving intercepts on about 100 telephone lines and some 34,000 man-hours of surveillance on suspects, security sources said.

Once the fertiliser plot suspects had been arrested, security officials drew up a list of 55 contacts of the fertiliser gang who they considered needed following up -- typically, unidentified faces from surveillance photographs or voices from wiretaps or bugged vehicles.

''POSSIBLY'' Priority was given to 15 people who were suspected of involvement in terrorist activity in Britain. But Khan and Tanweer were part of the remaining group of 40 who were considered less essential targets, the sources said.

An investigation by parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee last year said MI5 realised after the July 7 suicide attacks it had come across Khan and Tanweer ''on the peripheries of other investigations'', although it did not detail these.

It said the security services had taken reasonable decisions based on the resources and information they had at the time.

One senior counter-terrorism detective, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it required 50 officers to keep just one person under surveillance for 24 hours.

''Obviously,'' he said, ''the question will be asked: if more investigation had been carried out on Khan and Tanweer, would anything be different, could the attacks of the 7th July, 2005 have been prevented?'' ''I refer to the Intelligence and Security Committee report which concludes, 'possibly'.'' The committee added that a decision by the government's Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre to lower the threat level to Britain in May 2005, just weeks before the July 7 bombings, had not affected the alertness of police and emergency services.

But security officials are now preparing for fresh scrutiny of their decisions in the light of the newly public material.

''We're certainly bracing ourselves for a lot of unfair criticism,'' the security source said.

REUTERS SS KN1735