UK bomb trial's "missed link" angers London victims

LONDON, May 1 (Reuters) A day after the end of Britain's longest terrorism trial, Britons were not so much relieved that one bombing wave was averted as angry that more wasn't done to prevent attacks in London that killed 52.

Five men, four of them of Pakistani origin, were found guilty yesterday of plotting al Qaeda-inspired fertiliser bomb attacks across Britain and sentenced to life in prison.

What also emerged from the year-long trial was that two of the bombers who blew themselves up in London in July 2005 were spotted by security services consorting with the fertiliser plotters 17 months before the attacks.

That link raises questions about whether Britain's security services could have prevented the July 7 bombings, the deadliest attacks on British soil since World War Two.

The interior minister at the time, Charles Clarke, said it would have been almost impossible to foresee the attacks because the four who carried them out were ''clean skins'' -- people who had never crossed the authorities' radar.

The truth, it turns out, was different.

''We were deceived,'' said Jacqui Putnam, who was on board an underground train that was blown up on July 7.

''We were told that these four characters were not affiliated with al Qaeda and were working entirely independently. We were told that when it was known that they weren't -- because they had been under surveillance.'' Following the trial revelations, opposition politicians and July 7 survivors have called for an independent, public inquiry.

The government has dismissed the call and said such a move would ''divert the energies and efforts of so many in the security services'' engaged in other cases.

''NO COMPLACENCY'' The sensitivities surrounding the ''missed link'' are such that Britain's domestic security agency, MI5, issued an unprecedented statement defending its operations.

''My service has never been complacent,'' wrote MI5 head Jonathan Evans on its Web site, which provided a series of documents separating what it called the ''rumours and reality'' of the links between the fertiliser plotters and July 7.

''The attack on July 7 in London was a terrible event. The sense of disappointment, felt across the service, at not being able to prevent the attack (despite our efforts to prevent all such atrocities) will always be with us.'' Two bombers -- Shehzad Tanweer and Mohammad Sidique Khan -- were photographed, recorded and followed by intelligence operatives several times in early 2004 in the company of the fertiliser bomb plotters.

The security service says while that is true, Tanweer and Sidique Khan could never be properly identified and were never directly involved in the fertiliser plot.

''The main issue is even if we'd had Mohammad Sidique Khan's full name, date of birth, address and inside leg measurement, he wouldn't have been investigated because he wasn't involved in terrorist activity in March 2004,'' a security source said.

Security experts expressed sympathy with the police and intelligence services.

''On the one hand, they screwed up to the extent their job is to follow leads and prevent terrorist incidents,'' said David Claridge, director of Janusian Security Risk Management.

But he said the decisions taken were understandable because of the resource constraints on MI5 and the need to choose the best avenue of investigation among a mass of information.

REUTERS KD PM1946