Call for bombing inquiry

Huddersfield Daily Examiner (Huddersfield, England), June 23, 2009

A FORMER counter terrorism chief wants an independent public inquiry into how four Yorkshire suicide bombers carried out the July 7 terror attacks.

Andy Hayman, the assistant commissioner at Scotland Yard at the time of the bombings in July 2005, said without an open inquiry "no-one can be sure if key issues have been missed".

The comments come in his book, The Terrorist Hunters.

The bombers and 52 people died in the blasts on London's transport network.

Mr Hayman said: "Incidents of less gravity have attracted the status of a public inquiry - train crashes, a death in custody and even other terrorist attacks.

"How can there not be a full, independent public inquiry into the deaths of 52 commuters on London's transport system? "There has been no overview, no pulling together of each strand of review - no-one can be sure if key issues have been missed." Survivors and relatives of the July 7 victims have taken their fight for a public inquiry to the High Court A report exonerated the security services of any blame for leaving Mohammed Sidique Khan, the Dewsbury-based ringleader of the attacks, free to plot the atrocities.

The bombers were Khan; Shehzad Tanweer, born in Bradford and living in Leeds; Jermaine Lindsay, from Huddersfield, a convert to Islam, who moved to Buckinghamshire; and Hasib Mir Hussain, from Leeds..