MI5 'knew of plot in advance'

Philip Johnston
London Telegraph
Tuesday July 3, 2007

The internet was buzzing with claims yesterday that MI5 had prior intelligence on the London car bomb attack.

The suggestion was fuelled by the fact that nightclubs were warned a few weeks ago by police that they were potential targets for car bombers.

An advice booklet for bars, pubs and nightclubs was produced by the security services and included a section on "vehicle borne improvised explosive devices".

But a Whitehall source said that the booklet's distribution to clubs just a few weeks ago was long-planned and "purely coincidental''

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MI5 said it had no advance intelligence of the Haymarket bombs, though the threat level had been at ''severe''.

However, MI5 may have been monitoring those involved in a cell at some stage - which, if true, could provoke claims that they were allowed to slip through the net.

A number of proven and alleged terrorist plots have emerged in the UK since the Twin Towers attacks in September 2001:

Dec 2001: Richard Reid, a British-born convert to Islam, tries to blow up an airliner, bound from Paris to Miami, with a shoe bomb. Reid is in prison in the US.

Saajid Badat, another Briton, is jailed for 13 years for plotting to become a shoe bomber, but pulled out.

Jan 2003: Anti-terrorist police find a poison factory in a flat in Wood Green, north London. Days later, a raid on a flat in Manchester ends in the murder of a Stephen Oake, a special branch officer.

March 2004: British-born extremists of Pakistani background are arrested in the "fertiliser plot" case. They have more than half a ton of ammonium nitrate fertiliser, a basic ingredient of home-made explosives, in a self-storage depot in Hanwell, west London.

July 2005: Four British men blow themselves up on three Tube trains and a bus in central London, killing 52 passengers.

Two of them - Mohammed Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer - had trained as terrorists in Pakistan.

July 2007: A jury is deciding the fate of a number of men accused of trying to repeat the carnage of July 7, 2005 on July 21, 2005.

In a separate case, a number of people are accused of plotting to blow up jets.