Lindsay. MI5 failed to monitor him

LONDON, England (AP) - Questions intensified yesterday over the revelation that one of the suspected London suicide bombers was investigated last year by MI5, Britain's domestic intelligence service, and that US intelligence had warned Britain that Jamaican-born Germaine Lindsay, 19, was on a terror watchlist, but MI5 failed to monitor him.

MI5 agents reportedly determined that Mohammad Sidique Khan was not a threat to national security and decided against putting him under surveillance after checking him out in connection with an alleged plot to blow up a truck bomb in London.

British intelligence reportedly found that Khan, 30, a teaching assistant at a northeastern England primary school, had visited the home of a man linked to an alleged plot to blow up a London target, possibly a Soho nightclub, with a fertiliser bomb.

In that investigation, known as Operation Crevice, detectives arrested eight suspects across southern England and seized half a ton of ammonium nitrate, a chemical fertiliser used in many bomb attacks.

The Home Office, which speaks for MI5, declined to comment on the suggestion that agents had dropped a crucial lead, or on reports that a Briton of Pakistani origin suspected of links to al-Qaeda had entered the country two to three weeks before the attacks and flown out the day before.

If true, "this would indeed be evidence of an enormous failure", said Charles Shoebridge, a security analyst and former counterterrorism intelligence officer.

Intelligence bosses face a tricky task in choosing how to allocate their limited resources for tasks like surveillance, he said.

Nonetheless, Shoebridge said, "had the assessment of the available intelligence regarding Khan been different, so might also have been the outcome of July the 7th," when the attackers blew up three London subways and a double-decker bus, killing 56.

John Carnt, a former Scotland Yard detective superintendent with expertise in counterterrorism and covert surveillance, said intelligence agencies are so bombarded with information it can be hard to home in on any one individual.

Khan's "might have been one name amidst many other names, and there may have been nothing else that added weight to it", said Carnt, now managing director of Vance International Ltd, a London-based security and intelligence company. "You've got bits of information coming across your desk. It can be difficult to identify which bit to pay closer attention to."

The best leads in the case so far had come from an impressive combination of old-fashioned detective work and modern technology, with little apparent out-front assistance from the intelligence services, Shoebridge said.

Detectives identified the four suspected bombers within days of the attacks by scouring the bomb sites for physical clues and scrutinising closed-circuit television footage for their images. Crucial help came from the distraught mother of suspected bus bomber Hasib Hussain, 18, who phoned police hours after the bombings to report her son missing.

"Intelligence is now being brought to bear, but essentially in a reactive manner," Shoebridge said. "In an ideal world ... intelligence should be used proactively to prevent terrorist attacks from taking place."

Trousers in Denim

Cream of the 'Crop'

Cheeky's World