RELATIVES of victims of the London terrorist attacks that claimed 52 lives demanded a full investigation last night, after the only people charged over the atrocities were cleared.
Campaigners want an independent inquiry to be ordered after three men accused of helping the four suicide bombers who struck on 7 July, 2005, were cleared yesterday.
Waheed Ali, 25, Sadeer Saleem, 28, and Mohammed Shakil, 32, all from Beeston, Lee
ds, were found not guilty at Kingston Crown Court, London, of conspiring with the terrorists. But two of them, Ali and Shakil, were convicted of conspiracy to attend a terrorist training camp after they were arrested before boarding a flight for Pakistan in 2007.
Families of those killed in the attacks, in which up to 1,000 people were hurt, think no-one will now be brought to justice.
The trial lifted the lid on how two of the suicide bombers managed to slip the net of the security services, despite being watched by the authorities monitoring another suspect on four separate occasions.
Graham Foulkes, whose 22-year-old son, David, was killed in the Edgware Road Tube explosion, said: "For almost four years we have been asking for an inquiry into what led up to 7/7.
"We are not looking for people to blame, but we also know that we have not been told the whole truth.
"We believe that crucial lessons need to be learned. If mistakes have been made, they should be put right, not covered up. This is not a witch-hunt; it is simply about saving lives."
Robert Webb, whose sister, Laura, 29, was killed at Edgware Road, said the trial revealed "a little more truth" about the attacks. He said the trial revealed unseen CCTV footage, new evidence about their training and the nature of the explosives, but added it raised the "awful" question of whether the bombings could have been prevented.
The three men, who were re-tried after an earlier jury failed to reach verdicts, were accused of visiting the London Eye, Natural History Museum and London Aquarium to identify potential targets seven months before the attacks.
The suicide bombers Mohammed Siddique Khan, Shehzad Tanweer, Hasib Hussain and Germaine Lindsay detonated rucksack devices packed with explosives on three Tube trains and a bus. The trial heard the three defendants travelled from Leeds to London on 16 December, 2004, with Hussain, who went on to detonate his bomb on the No30 bus in Tavistock Square, claiming 13 lives.
There they met Lindsay, who killed 26 people on a Piccadilly Line train.
Prosecutors claimed the three men conducted a "hostile reconnaissance" of potential targets during a two-day visit, claiming it was "an important first step in what was, by then, a settled plan to cause explosions in the UK".
The three defendants admitted making the visit, but claimed it was entirely innocent.
The three defendants grew up in the same tight-knit Asian community in Beeston as Khan, Tanweer and Hussain. The trial of the three men did not know Ali was present when two of the suicide bombers – Khan and Tanweer – held meetings with terrorist Omar Khyam, who is now serving a life sentence after being found guilty in May 2007 of plotting to blow up a nightclub or shopping centre following Britain's biggest terrorism trial at the Old Bailey.
Khan, the ringleader of the suicide bombers, and Shezhad Tanweer were watched by the authorities as he met Khyam on four occasions in early 2004. They were twice tracked returning to Leeds, photographed at a service station and a McDonald's restaurant and filmed walking with Khyam, of Crawley, West Sussex, in south-east London.
It was during surveillance on him that MI5 officers came across Tanweer and Khan, who had attended a terrorist training camp with Khyam in Pakistan two years before 7/7. But they were dismissed as "peripheral figures". Just 16 months later, the terrorist cell led by Khan killed 52 people on London's transport network.
The court heard a number of trips were organised to training camps in Pakistan. Ali travelled with Khan in 2001, while Shakil joined him in 2003 on another trip where they met Khyam and trained in the use various arms . In November 2004 Khan and Tanweer left the UK expecting to "fight jihad" in Afghanistan.
Not-guilty verdicts mark end of road for investigationsSECURITY experts believe the end of the trial marks the "last throw of the dice" for the police investigation into 7 July – despite their claims that others were involved in planning the attacks.
In the course of the investigation, officers took 18,450 statements, produced 37,000 exhibits and 19,400 documents, and noted 24,000 identities and individuals.
But to date Waheed Ali, Sadeer Saleem and Mohammed Shakil are the only people to face charges over the attacks.
They first came to the attention of police in 2004 when they showed up in surveillance of Omar Khyam, the ringleader of a plot to blow up shopping centres and nightclubs with bombs made from fertiliser.
But it was not until late 2005 that they became "persons of interest" when officers discovered traces of their DNA at a bomb factory. It took many hours of painstaking work analysing and cross-referencing countless phone records before a picture of the London trip began to emerge.
Officers examined 4,700 phone numbers and 90,000 calls to eventually determine that the three men were in London with Germaine Lindsay and Hasib Hussain.
It was October 2006 by the time officers tried to track down CCTV footage of the men in the capital and most of the tapes had been destroyed.
Former Scotland Yard counter-terrorism chief Andy Hayman said: "We must respect the verdict of the jury but, rather than it starting to bring a small degree of closure, we are instead left with a deep sense of emptiness. I have no doubt Mohammed Siddique Khan and the other three bombers had significant assistance from other people in this country and overseas."
He added: "It is extremely frustrating to reach this milestone knowing that people who aided and abetted the murders of 52 innocent people remain at large.
"I remain firmly of the view, however, that everything that could possibly be done was done and every lead was comprehensively pursued."
However John McDowall, head of the Metropolitan Police's Counter-Terrorism Command, said: "While those directly responsible for the bombings died in the attacks, we remain convinced that others must have been involved in the planning.
"I would urge anybody who has any information about the 7 July attacks to come forward and contact police. I understand people may have concerns about the impact of giving us information, but it is the right thing to do."
DRAMATIC INSIGHT INTO BOMBINGSA DRAMATIC insight into the lead up to the 2005 bombings and their aftermath was provided during the trial in a series of CCTV recordings.
Security footage included the four bombers on an earlier dummy run, but the most powerful images were in film of the moments two of their devices were exploded.
The pictures played to the jury showed a cloud of dust and smoke that filled a platform at Liverpool Street station seconds after a train blown apart by Shezhad Tanweer, killing seven passengers, had pulled away.
Other footage showed the chaos and horrified reaction of those near the No 30 bus in Tavistock Square when bomber Hasib Hussain detonated his rucksack. Hussain's movements prior to the blast were also caught on CCTV. He was seen bending over his rucksack after suffering a technical hitch and then buying an item, believed to be a battery, from a newsagent.
The jury saw footage of the journey the four made from their homes in Leeds and Aylesbury to Luton railway station on the morning of 7 July. Grainy pictures show the four gathering around the boot of a hired Nissan Micra in the car park where they put on the rucksacks containing the bombs.
The four pass through ticket barriers at Luton station and mingle with other passengers on the platform.
The court was shown the last sighting of the four together as they arrive at King Cross Thameslink station in London before disappearing into the underground system.
Earlier footage showed Khan, Tanweer and Lindsay spending four hours in the capital on a dry run nine days before 7 July.
Waheed Ali, Sadeer Saleem and Mohammed Shakil, the trio cleared of conspiring to help the bombers, made no secret of their connections with them.
The court heard Ali was "best friends" with Aldgate bomber Shehzad Tanweer from childhood, as the pair grew up on the same Beeston street in Leeds. They both met Khan at their local gym.
Shakil got to know Khan when they worked at the Hardy Street Mosque in Beeston as youth workers in 1996. Saleem knew the bombers through his work at the Iqra bookshop. He approached Ali on a bus in 2001 and invited him to come to the shop to learn about Islam.
He saw more of Ali and Khan after 2004, when he started work as a caretaker at the community centre in Beeston where the two men did martial arts training with Tanweer. Tavistock Square bomber Hasib Hussain joined them for jujitsu classes at that time. Russell Square bomber Jermaine Lindsay often travelled to Leeds, where he met Khan and the defendants.
