The Clipboard: did US blunder result in British security services losing a lead on the 7/7 bombers? and other mysteries

Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan: Did US blunder result in British security services losing a lead on the 7/7 bombers?

Background: Did the Bush Administration Burn an al-Qaeda Double Agent?, Bush Team on Defensive Over al-Qaeda Leak, The Outing of Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan: State of Play

July 8, 2005: Remember this one?

Now: ABC News reports London Bombers Tied to Al Qaeda Plot in Pakistan. AMERICABlog and Juan Cole, among others, connect the dots (see also this Metafilter thread).

According to ABC News, the connection is with Mohammad Sidique Khan.

Other mysteries

Operation Crevice and other counter-terrorism sweeps: What's what?

Mohammad Sidique Khan's name seems to have come up several other times as well. The first mention I found was a New York Times report on something called Operation Crevice, from March 2004. The article cites French interior minister Nicholas Sarkozy. Notes and a translation from the original French report can be found here. What's curious about this is that Sarkozy claims that eight men were arrested in Operation Crevice but thirteen should have been. The August operation that involved Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan originally captured thirteen men, but five had to be released for lack of reason to hold them and the remaining eight were held. It seems strange that both the March and August operations would involve thirteen suspects of whom eight were arrested and five released - could somebody be getting these confused? Sarkozy also apparently claimed that Mohammad Sidique Khan and possibly the others were among the five who were released, but later this was withdrawn.

Here are some reports from March 2004 about Operation Crevice and the eight suspects held: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Mohammad Sidique Khan's name also seems to have come up in still another investigation in 2004. Operation Crevice had to do with a 1300 pound potential truck bomb and this story mentions a plot involving a 600 pound truck bomb, which is weird (especially since 1300 pounds converts to just about 600 kilograms). According to the story, Khan was on the periphery of that investigation and was cleared at the time as "not a threat". Hopefully more information about this story will be forthcoming, to determine if it's a third investigation or is actually referring to one of the other two. My guess is that it refers to the March investigation.

To sum up the facts as I understand them so far, in March 2004 there was a massive anti-terrorism sweep, over a truck bomb plot that might have been targeting a public site in London such as a nightclub or sporting event, in which eight British-Pakistani men were arrested. French minister Sarkozy originally said that thirteen men should have been arrested instead of eight and implied that Khan was one of the five, but seems to have later backed away from this and just said that Khan was connected with the eight.

In August 2004, the British had to move suddenly on a network of British-Pakistani men after Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan's cover was blown. Thirteen men were captured; five were released and eight were arrested. According to the ABC News story that forms the original basis for this blog entry, Mohammad Sidique Khan is now believed to have been an associate or connected with this group. The implication made by John Aravosis, Juan Cole, and other bloggers is that if the British security services hadn't had to move early, they might have had the time to find Khan's connection to this group.

Finally, at an unspecified time in 2004, during an investigation of a truck bomb plot alleged to be targeting a nightclub in London, Khan's name came up as an associate and he was investigated but deemed not to be a threat.

The odd coincidences are that both March and August are said to involve five suspects who had to be released, leaving eight arrested, and that both March and the undated investigation involve truck bomb plots in London.

Did Khan's name come up once, twice, or three times? If the August operation hadn't been rushed, and Khan's name would have come up in connection with it at the time, would that have led to revising the estimate on him so that maybe he was watched as a threat?

Mohammed Junaid Babar: What did they know and when did they know it?

The Scotsman reports on the testimony of informant Mohammed Junaid Babar that he knew Khan, although it doesn't go into details (the Scotsman article also repeats the French claim that there were originally thirteen suspects in Operation Crevice and five were released). Babar is Pakistani-American and was involved with an alleged terrorist ring in Pakistan and connected with the March 2004 plot foiled by Operation Crevice. He pled guilty in June 2004 and began turning evidence. According to another report from last year, he was also connected with the cell involved in the August 2004 operation. Did Babar lead to Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan or was Khan captured independently? Were the Americans getting any information directly from Babar about the August plot and, if so, did they pass it on to the Brits?

Was Mohammad Sidique Khan the mastermind?

Was Khan the mastermind rather than a fifth, unknown individual being so? He fits the profile of an older man (30,while the average age of the others is 20) with possible al-Qa'ida links in Pakistan, where Pakistani authorities are reporting he visited along with Tanweer, whose visit was already known. This story is now appearing in the British press (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). Also: Juan Cole examines Tanweer's visits to Pakistan and the groups he was involved with.

Meanwhile, the Israeli press is claiming that he was involved with two British-Pakistanis who became suicide bombers there in 2003. Follow-up: The Scotsman now supports the idea that Khan was the ringleader but reports that the Israelis themselves are downplaying the 2003 report (I'm not sure why that came in to muddy the water). The latest on the Tel Aviv angle is that Khan visited the city in 2003 but had no connection to the suicide bombings that later took place. So much for that, apparently.

The Independent also takes up the ringleader idea and further reports that the idea that a separate al-Qa'ida operative slipped in and out of the country right ahead of the bombings "is becoming increasingly discredited and may be a case of mistaken identity" (mistaken identity confirmed here and here). The police were making the claim, the security services refuted.

Who in the world is Haroon Rashid Aswat?

A new mystery. The UK is looking for a man named Haroon Rashid Aswat even though Pakistan's intelligence service claims to already be holding him. However, Pakistani ministers have denied holding anyone by that name (or the variant Haroon Rashid Aswad) and according to some reports, British counter-terrorism officials do not believe there is firm evidence the man being held by the Pakistanis has connections to the July 7 attacks. Some stories describe Aswat and/or the man arrested as having had guns, an explosive belt, a British passport, and a large amount of cash, but another report suggests that an unrelated person name Abu Ubaid was arrested like this; Aswat apparently also goes by the name Abu Ubaid, which may explain the confusion. Some stories claim that Aswat's name or number was found on the phones of the bombers (but this doesn't make sense, since these stories say they had their phones with them but how could the phones have survived the blasts?) but another report says that British intelligence only passed on the name of a Pakistani businessman who had called Aswat's father. What a mess of confusion! Aside: Background on Haroon Rashid Aswat. More here; this report gives the name as Aswat Haroon Rashid and says the FBI still believe he died in Afghanistan by or in 2002 so he can't be the person who's being held. My speculation on this is that a man who may be named Haroon Rashid Aswad slipped in and out of the UK ahead of the bombings and is the person currently being held in Pakistan. Because of his name, he was initially mistaken for Haroon Rashid Aswat (or, Aswat Haroon Rashid), the one involved with Abu Hamza al-Misri, but British authorities and Pakistani ministers, along with the FBI, have ruled this out and determined that Aswad has no clear connection to the bombings. It appears that sources in the Pakistani intelligence service conflated several different stories and mixed in a great amount of unconfirmed information, creating a sensationalistic story, but there is much less to this than meets the eye.

Update: There still seems to be a lot of confusion surrounding this case and conflicting reports still, but the Seattle Times reports that when indictments were being prepared in 2002, Seattle DOJ officials wanted to indict Aswat, but those higher up chose not to do this. It's still not clear if Aswat is even still alive, and if he was actually involved in the July 7 attacks in any way, but if he is and he was, could indicting him in 2002 have meant that he would be in prison now instead of being involved in terrorist attacks?

Update 2: I didn't think it was possible for this to get any more bizarre, but it did. The Los Angeles Times reported that Aswat is being held in Zambia and was detained last week (possibly after the alert that starts this part of the story), a story that was subsequently carried throughout the British press. CNN claimed that Aswat was in South Africa in June and U.S. officials had him under surveillance at that time and wanted to arrest him - but when South Africa referred this request to the UK, the UK turned it down because he was a British citizen?! The British Daily Mail said that the Foreign Office had no knowledge of any such request and there doesn't seem to be anything further on this angle. British authorities have stated clearly (1, 2, 3) that Aswat is not the mastermind and that the widespread reports in the media about Aswat are not true. According to the Guardian report (3), the U.S. has charged Aswat over the Oregon case but apparently wants to first render him to another country to be tortured rather than simply having Zambia extradite him to the U.S. WTF? How low will our government sink? Maybe to sending him to Guantanamo? According to Michael Smith (who usually writes for the Times of London), the CNN story is true and the reason the Brits blocked it is that the U.S. wanted to "render" Aswat then, and then send him to Guantanamo. I'm not sorry they blocked it in that case. In any case, it now looks like Zambia has chosen to extradite him to the UK instead of the U.S., which again seems a relief given what rumors were floating around about the U.S. It seems like we were trying to act really tough to make up for the earlier incompetence of failing to indict him. I wonder if we'll ever actually get serious about dealing with terrorism instead of engaging in grandstanding and posturing.

The Abu Faraj al-Libbi connection: What did they know and when did they know it?

An article in the Hindu News from Saturday examines the Pakistan angle in particular, focusing on another person of interest, Zeeshan Siddique, whom Tanweer met in Pakistan and who has some very suspicious connections, including to Asif Hanif, one of the 2003 suicide bombers in Israel. Is this the real story with Hanif?

Siddique is also said to be connected to Abu Faraj al-Libbi, who was arrested in May. Bush claimed that al-Libbi was the "number three in al-Qa'ida" but according to the British and other Europeans, the Americans were confusing al-Libbi with someone with a similar name and that al-Libbi was only a regional facilitator in Pakistan (read the whole article for more derision of the American exaggeration). In any case, if the Pakistanis and Americans were holding al-Libbi since the beginning of May, did they learn anything from him about Zeeshan Siddique or about Siddique's friends like Tanweer? If not, why not? If so, did they tell the Brits?