7/7 London bombings: "The rules of the game have changed"

to admit that the suicide bombers had been motivated by anger over the U.K.’s involvement in the invasion of Iraq, even once two of the bombers stated this in suicide videos released by al Qaeda.

Blair’s comments about the “rules of the game” did not refer only to the legislative framework governing counterterrorism. The whole atmosphere in which the police, MI5, and MI6 operated was about to change. Police stop-and-searches increased dramatically. There was talk of armed “marshals” being deployed on trains. One man, Jean Charles de Menezes, was mistakenly shot dead by officers who followed him on to a tube train at Stockwell station in London the day after the failed attacks of 21 July 2005 after he was confused with one of the suspects. Another man was shot and injured during a counterterrorism raid on his home in east London.

It is now becoming apparent that in the aftermath of 7 July there was also an  increase in the number of British nationals being detained and tortured overseas. The victims included Tahir Shah, the film-making son of the Sufi writer Idries Shah, who was detained in Pakistan a week after the suicide bombings, hooded, forced into stress positions, then questioned about the attacks in what he describes as a “fully-equipped torture room.” At the same time, Alam Ghafoor was being tortured in Dubai, where he had been detained while on a business trip, apparently because he hailed from Yorkshire and resembled one of the bombers. Both men were told that they had been detained at the request of British authorities, who had been well aware how they would be treated. Neither men knew anything about the bomb plot, and both were released without charge.

After the allegations of British collusion in torture began to emerge, in 2008, there were fresh complaints from a number of young British Muslims, particularly Londoners of Somali origin, who said they had been approached by MI5 officers who threatened them with dire consequences whenever they traveled overseas unless they agreed to become informers.

While this was happening, police and MI5 officers were continuing the hunt for those individuals who had aided the July bombers. A small team of Scotland Yard detectives moved to Leeds. During the year that followed the attacks, police compiled 13,300 witness statements and viewed 6,000 hours of CCTV footage.

In March 2007 they made their first arrests, and two months later detained four more people. At that time, police indicated that they believed up to thirty people had been involved in the bombings. Peter Clarke, the head of the Yard’s counterterrorism command, said: “I firmly believe that there are other people who have knowledge of what lay behind the attacks in July 2005, knowledge that they have not shared with us. I don’t only believe it, I know it for a fact.”

One of those arrested admitted possessing an al Qaeda training manual, and two others were jailed after being convicted of attending terrorism training camps, but nobody has ever been convicted of conspiring to cause the 7 July explosions.