King's Cross station emerges as focus of bombings probe

[stickdog]

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/12108378.htm

King's Cross station emerges as focus of bombings probe

By Matthew Schofield

Knight Ridder Newspapers

LONDON - British investigators are focusing on the busy London transportation hub of King's Cross in their search for clues into last Thursday's bombings, which officials say killed at least 52 people. One train was eight minutes east of King's Cross when a bomb aboard it exploded. Another was eight minutes west. The third was just seconds south. And the double-decker bus was only a short walk away when the bomb aboard it - the last of four - went off.

...

British Prime Minister Tony Blair told Parliament that it now "seems probable the bombs were the work of Islamic extremist terrorists."

He pledged to introduce new anti-terror laws and to give police whatever powers they need to find the bombers.

...

Blair said police have concluded the bombs were sophisticated, made of military-grade high explosives, and relatively small, 10 pounds or less each. "The bombs were certainly not homemade," he said.

[Maple]

1. Blair is blowing smoke again

Anything to try and prove he was right to take his nation into the Iraq quagmire.

http://noquarter.typepad.com/my_weblog/2005/07/the_london_bomb.html

[mikelgb]

2. I see

Blair needs his own little Patriot Act

[DURHAM D]

3. For many years I stayed in the Bloomsbury/British museum area

every time I was in London (approx. 30 times over a 10 year period). I noticed beginning in the mid-70s that many middle-eastern men stayed/lived in that area. In fact, the hotel nearest the Russell Square tube stop was a private hotel for Arabs only. I don't know if still the case today.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

4. -snip-

The focus on King's Cross comes as experts worry that the people who planted the bombs probably escaped and may be planning new attacks.

Followed predictably by this:

He pledged to introduce new anti-terror laws and to give police whatever powers they need to find the bombers <destroy their political enemies>.


Admission: I added that last bit.

[mom cat]

5. Wonder what country might have made those military-grade high

explosives. Forensics should be able to determine that.

[fedsron2us]

6. Blair will be desperately hoping it is not 'Made In Iraq'

On the other hand Bush would probably be quite happy with 'Made in Iran'

[mom cat]

7. What if it was Made in America...like the anthrax...or Britain itself...

I just hope the evidence does not take a hike!

[daleo]

8. The inference they seem to be making

Is that the four bombers may have diverged from the King's Cross Station (if they were suicide bombers). Or converged on it, leaving bombs on the relevant subway lines if they used timers.

The bus bomb seems all wrong for these scenarios, though. This is why I don't like the fact that the timeline changed from day 1 to day 3. It makes you wary of any theory that is developed later on. I still haven't read a good account of why the timeline was supposed to be so wrong on day 1. I know people will claim confusion, the distance in the tunnels, etc. - still, it seems like such a fundamental fact of a crime that you wouldn't expect such a serious mistake.

[muriel_volestrangler]

9. Yes, there still hasn't been an explanation for that

I could understand the timeline being wrong for the first couple of hours, when the emergency servies were more concerned with getting casualties out; and I can understand a mistake of a couple of minutes - perhaps the difference between the actual explosion time, and when an emergency call was logged (for instance, the Picadilly line bomb was said to be about 5 minutes after the Liverpool St. one - but the Picadilly line is a deep line where mobile phones don't work, so communication form there could be delayed a little, until somone found an emergency phone, for instance, or made their way up to the surface).

But a 25 minute difference, which was allowed to stand for over 24 hours, is very strange. In that time, at least 5 trains would have been due to pass through where the explosion happened. I'd have thought there would have been loads of people saying "no, the trains were stopped 25 minutes earlier" (for instance, the people at the next stop, which is quite close, and I would have thought would have heard the explosion very clearly - I can't believe none of them looked at their watches).

There is one theory that the bus bomber failed to plant his device on the Underground, and reset the time for an hour later - and then couldn't reset it again.

Perhaps it's just that no-one thought it worth correcting the mistake, until the BBC got the video which proved the time of the Edgware Road explosion; perhaps the authorities thought that, once the wrong time had been given out at the start, it would 'lull the bombers into a false sense of security', perhaps it's incompetence (which will have caused a lot of people unnecessary worry, if they thought they knew where their family and friends were at the false time).