HaymanTHE WAY OF UNTRUTH – some comments on Hayman’s book ‘The Terrorist Hunters’

Hayman’s book about July 7th, banned by the High Court at the request of the Attorney General in July 2009, has now been reissued. It is focused upon the London bombings of 2005 and the aftermath, and it sticks closely to the sequence of events given in the government’s anonymous Official Account of May, 2006. Thus, it still has the four alleged bombers get onto the 07.40 am train at Luton, on their way to London! (p.107) The discovery (by me) that no such train ran that morning led to a major unravelling of the official story – so that in June, 2006 the Home Secretary John Reid announced in the House of Commons that this aspect of the government’s narrative had been mistaken. Hayman has the CCTV record the presence of the four alleged suicide-bombers at 8.26 am at the Thameslink King’s Cross platform. Here are the options for the times when trains from Luton arrived at King’s Cross, all greatly delayed that morning.

  • Departing 7.24 am. Arrives 8.23 am.
  • Departing 7.30 am. Arrives 8.38 am.
  • Departing 7.40 am. Cancelled.
  • Departing 7.48 am. Arrives 8.42 am.

Clearly, the train departing at 7.24 is the only option. But here, as Nafeez Ahmed pertinently asked, ‘If this is the correct account of what happened, why have the police consistently and repeatedly cited impossible accounts – purportedly based on verifiable data – rather than simply amending them? (1) Seventy million pounds on ‘Operation Theseus’ and they cannot even get a train time right?

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Hubble, Bubble – the Mystery Brew

Police burst into the Alexander Grove ‘bomb factory’ in Leeds at dawn on Tuesday 12th July, 2005, and found, according to Andy Hayman:

“… pots and tubs of a thick bubbling yellow liquid – a cast-iron bath was full of it. There was an almost unbearable rotting stench.”

Oh yeah – no photos ever shown, nor any journalists or independent observers ever allowed in to see it. He added:

‘The explosives experts knew immediately that we were dealing with something weird, volatile and unstable…. No one was prepared to move the bath or its contents out because they feared it might explode.’ (P98).

Later that day clever police found the same mystery liquid in Luton car park. ‘Inside the car we found containers of the bubbling liquid we’d found earlier that morning in the bomb factory in Leeds.’ These, Hyman helpfully explained, were ‘bombs left behind.’ It sounds just like a school pantomime.

Would suicide bombers really leave a whole bath full of an evil, explosive liquid – plus a load of ‘bombs’ in a car in a car-park two hundred miles due south containing it? Not surprisingly, there was another car adjacent, with a gun left in it – and from the number on it they could conveniently tell it was registered under the name of Jermaine Lindsay! Wow, these cops knew how to hunt for clues. With Khan’s fingerprints found at the Alexander Grove flat, that clinched the story.

If we compare this account with that of Ahmed, which is rather more scholarly and based upon accounts of the time, he describes the several conflicting accounts of the second car at Luton car-park, where it was found and what it contained, over several pages, but with no hint of a gun found in it (although the Official Account did state this). Originally, we were told that this Fiat Brava (the second car) had lots of bombs, or maybe bomb components, in it: ‘Investigators told the Sydney Morning Herald they had ‘found another nine bombs in Lindsay’s red Fiat which had been parked at Luton railway station.’ (2) There was debate over this number and whether they were just bomb components rather than bombs, as if differing storytellers had competing agendas. But, by the time of Hayman’s account all of these have all simply vanished, to be replaced by – a gun.

If the wicked terrorists brewed up an evil, yellow smelly liquid, filling a whole bath, then how come five days after July 7th it was still a-bubbling? How come neither Andy Hyman nor any of his anti-terror police have a clue what this stuff is? Who would want to leave an entire bathtub of it behind? When The Sun – such a reliable source – published pictures of this bath three years later (see below), during the ‘July 7th trial,’ did we see any such potion in it? No, in fact. If it was ‘unstable’, how come the three of them – Tanweer, Khan and Hasib Hussein – were able to carry it in rucksacks, plus a load of other ‘bombs’ from Leeds to Luton in a rather small Nissan Micra? If it was ‘volatile’, why had it not all evaporated by the 12th, over those hot, summer days?Nail bomb at Luton

The flat at Alexander Grove was being rented by a PhD chemist from Leeds, Magdy Al-Nashar, who flew off to Egypt a couple of days before July 7th. Do we really want to believe he would have done that, with his bath full of a strange, explosive brew? Once the police found him in Cairo and arrested him, as they did, would they really have released him with no charges, had this been the case?

Then, in the Luton car-park, why should ‘containers’ of a bubbly liquid be described as ‘bombs’? The police supposedly let off nine controlled explosives ‘on material found in it’ i.e. in the car (according to the Official Report): does this mean that all the bomb material in this small car, blew up, or not? If it does, that would have terminated the forensic investigation. No newspaper report at the time alluded to a yellow, smelly, bubbly liquid? The ‘bombs’ shown to all the world (courtesy of ABC News, America, please note) from that Luton car-park were bottles with nails stuck onto them – no yellow liquid there visible. At Luton on weekdays cars are packed like sardines in the car-park, so nine explosions could have been problematic, and led to lawsuits. I found that the local papers did allude to two or three ‘controlled explosions’, not nine.

On July the 17th The Observer reported that 22 lbs of TATP (tri-acetone tri-peroxide, Appendix 9) had been found in said bath at Alexander Grove. That is a lot, but this white, powdery substance cannot be mistaken for a bubbling, smelly yellow fluid. TATP remained the explosive of choice attributed to the Four for two whole years – but, by the 2008 ‘July 7th’ trial at Kingston it had vanished without trace, and likewise it is not mentioned in Hayman’s book.

We here seem to be dealing with a fairy tale, one with no substrate of fact. My book doubted whether any actual explosive had been found in the Leeds ‘bomb factory’ or in the Luton car-park. What was detected around the exploded coaches in London, by real experts, could never be matched up with these stories. The Official Account, which Andy Hayman says in his book he helped to write, makes no comment about explosives, certainly no bubbly yellow liquid; only that, a year after the event, ‘Forensic analysis of material taken from Alexandra Grove continues.’ Uh-huh. One year later and the experts still have not analysed the bubbly yellow liquid? If there is no murder weapon, then those accused are not guilty.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, forensic experts had concluded on July 12th that the explosives used had to be military: ‘On 12 July 2005, Superintendent Christophe Chaboud, chief of French anti-terrorism Coordination Unit who was in London assisting Scotland Yard with its investigation, confirmed to The Times that,

‘The nature of the explosives appears to be military, which is very worrying….the material used were not homemade but sophisticated military explosives …’ (Ahmed p24)

The story bifurcates at this point, with a real expert concluding that military-grade explosives had been used – while police a few hours earlier allegedly discovered a bath full of goodness knows what, which no independent witness ever gets to see, no real chemist ever gets to analyse it, nor can any photo of it be shown – up in Leeds. There are two different ends of the official July 7th fabrication, one real and the other imaginary, and they can never match up.

Bath in 'Bomb factory'Not until August 2008 was the world shown images of the Alexandra Grove flat and its bath, during the Kingston Trial: by which time the story had changed one more time and it was then black pepper and peroxide, that the images were supposedly revealing. Nobody laughed. (Or, not in the court: the Metro, London’s free newspaper, did manage some humour in response to this announcement – if you have black pepper in your kitchen, and peroxide bleach in your bathroom, just give yourself up, it advised readers) Does that look like an explosive liquid in the bath to you, one that violently ripped apart three tube train coaches? Erm, no. ) My ToT comment was, ‘The photographs released by the Sun of that flat looked as if squatters had made quite a mess there.’ (p.193).

Tanweer had bought shower caps, Mr Hayman assures us, despite which his hair was still bleached from the substance (this mad little twist to the story first appeared in the Official Account). Peroxide hair bleach will work in solution, if applied to the hair, but its doubtful whether any hair would get bleached merely from working near to it – assuming we are asked to believe they are brewing up peroxide. It usually is, in these fake terror trials. While attending quite extensively the ‘July 7th trial in 2008, I did not notice that the three friends of the Four, who were on trial, had noted or commented on any bleaching of Tanweer or Khan’s hair in the weeks prior to July 7th, 2005.

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The Impossible Story

Around noon on Tuesday the 12th July, the famous CCTV images are discovered, of the four at King’s Cross, then later of them at Luton, allegedly from the morning of July 7th – much as in the Official Account. Mr Hayman will never forget – or so he tells us – ‘the breakthrough moment’ when his deputy Peter Clarke walked into his office with photo of the four ‘Asian-looking men with identical rucksacks on their backs, walking in King’s Cross.’ Phew! He adds, ‘The four were in pairs, like infantry walking into a war zone.’ This was a pivotal discovery, and meant that:

‘at last we could start piecing together the jigsaw. We needed to link the men in the pictures with those whose gym and credit cards we’d found in the trains. In fact, that one image would put us on the road to identifying the bombers… That picture rejuvenated the investigation.

Next, they ‘grabbed CCTV tapes from there’ (Luton station) on that morning, ‘and it would not be long before we gave that still to the media.’ This picture showed ‘the four on the escalator.’ He may be confused here, as three of them on an escalator (not four) was from the previous June 28th when an escalator photo appeared. ‘We needed to get them out to the press as soon as possible’ he wrote – here, ‘as soon as possible’ strangely turned out to mean, three years later…

In the original version of the story, when the Leeds – Luton story first appeared, the police announced the discovery ‘eureka’ as Hayman here describes it, before they got up to Leeds, as indeed one would reasonably expect. The problem with Hayman’s gripping tale is that the police have already got up to Leeds on the 9th and the dawn raids of the ‘terrorist’ homes appear with ‘controlled explosions’ on the 12th – so, what could have been the breakthrough ‘Eureka’ moment? How could they have been certain not merely of the identities and addresses of the three but of their guilt – merely from gym and bank cards?

Let’s just remind ourselves of the original story, here is The Guardian: ‘On Monday night came the breakthrough the police were waiting for – when the CCTV at King’s cross showed the four young men setting off in different directions.’ Other papers were all the same, eg here is The Scotsman:

‘Yet on Monday, astonished officers made an incredible discovery. Studying the footage from a camera located…’ etc. And to that my book commented, ‘If on Monday evening they had seen a CCTV image of four young men carrying rucksacks, how did that get them up to Leeds the next morning?’ (p86)

The clever police beavered away all through the night, and by the next morning they had located addresses of three of the terrorists.

No peep of protest has ever emerged from the British media, over the way in which the Met just shifted its alleged Eureka breakthrough from the evening of Monday, 11th to noon on Tuesday 12th of July. The epitaphs in my book for the British media tend to be credulous, obedient end amnesiac. Initially one had an inductive inference, whereby guilt was established from a key photograph, on Monday 11th, with teams working through the night etc – but in Hyman’s book it’s just a comic book absurdity, a temporal-sequence reversal that no rational person can take seriously.

How did the police get up to these three homes in Leeds on Hayman’s story, using just a few bank cards and gym club cards – which we the public have never been allowed to see? Hayman here develops the Official Account version somewhat. He makes much of Hasib Hussein’s mother phoning up the police in the evening of July 7th to report her son missing: but, we need a bit more than that to establish his guilt.

The young 18-year old Hasib had no interest in politics, nor any trace of anti-British sentiment that any of his friends recalled, no clue about bomb making or interest in chemistry that anyone ever discerned, and was keenly looking forward to various things in his life eg going to college and getting engaged to his sweetheart from Pakistan, and he loved playing cricket – not quite the profile of a person one would expect to top himself. So, on what is his alleged guilt established? Early accounts had his driving license as miraculously preserved on the 30 bus remains in Tavistock Square, but I then pointed out he was taking driving lessons from his Father (from several letters Mahmoud Hussein had sent me, explaining about his son) and now in Hayman’s account the driving license has disappeared. Still, even a driving license would not be quite enough to establish guilt for 7/7.

Let’s be clear that all of this happens before CCTV image recognition takes place – that is the twist in Hayman’s tale, which he cannot escape from. How can a couple of gym cards plus a bank card establish guilt? Not guilt as in, ‘we’d like you to come in for questioning?’ – the sort of thing the police used to do in the old days, when you were presumed innocent until proved guilty – but a police ‘raid,’ together with a ‘controlled explosion.’ Thus, Khan’s widow and her mother were terrorised by this dawn entry, and fled from their home as a result. At this point, I reckon his story does not make a lot of sense.

Hyman’s book describes the dawn raids on p96 and the Met’s big eureka moment with its King’s Cross image three chapters earlier on page 66, as if we are supposed to gain the impression that the latter had come first. However, he sticks to the Official Account version and so it cannot do so. ‘At last we could start piecing together the jigsaw’ etc – that was the way the papers originally reported the police’s breakthrough’ and it was then originally on Monday night – before the dawn raids on Leeds the next morning. Eventually this big police moment got shifted to a day later –maybe because, my book surmised, the police were unable to produce the relevant image. Hayman’s version has the police saying ‘we needed to get them to the press as soon as possible’ – why were they unable to do that, maybe because no such image existed? The image-sequence released three years later was far too dark and blurred for any such image-recognition to have taken place (see image, released during the Kingston trial, meant to show Tanweer at King’s Cross).

Near to midnight on July 7th, gym cards of Tanweer and Khan were supposedly recovered from the Aldwich blast. Tanweer is said to have set off the Aldwich bomb while Khan has been assigned that at Edgware road. Tanweer’s driving license and his gym card miraculously remained intact after the blast which ripped apart the whole coach. Then also more of Khan’s ID was found at Tavistock Square. Presumably we are being asked to accept a dialogue something like: ‘Tanweer, do us a favour; before topping yourself, throw this gym card of mine a little distance from you, close enough to be spattered by your blood but far enough not to be destroyed by the blast’

‘What for?’

‘Just do it.’

For absurdity, this rivals the conversation which we are presumably expected to believe took place in the Nissan Micra while driving down that morning. ‘Tanweer, you can’t commit suicide wearing all that cheerful-looking white gear – do change your trousers.’

‘O all right, as it happens I brought a spare pair. While packing all these deadly explosive bombs, that did just occur to me. Let’s stop while I put them on.’

Or maybe, it invites comparison with the mad monologue Hasib Hussein is supposed to have had in Boots around 9 am of that morning: ‘O shucks, I’m still alive – my detonator must have failed to go off! Maybe its battery is flat? I’d better buy a new one here and try again. Guess I’ll try a bus this time.’

Or, how about Hasib getting onto the 91 bus at Kings Cross, to commit suicide, just after that visit to Boot’s: (p108 of Hyman’s book) he then changes at Euston onto a 30 bus, heading precisely back to King’s Cross where he has just come from. That’s what the Metropolitan police apparently believe, and are you sure you want to believe it? Presumably we are not being asked to believe that Hasib knew that that one unique 30 bus was being diverted, so it would not drive to King’s Cross? Also, had he stayed on the 91 bus it would have taken him into Tavistock Square. That has to be a planned sequence, by those who knew the bus was going to blow up in that Square (3) – but, we digress.

Hayman’s account indicates, that the main evidence the police had of guilt, prior to the alleged CCTV images being discovered on 12th, lay in the ID of Khan turning up at two separate blast scenes! We are here at the extreme limits of absurdity. Presumably, his ID turning up at three blast scenes make the case even stronger? Or rather, it just shows that the perps know they can get away with anything they want to.
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Concerning the Atlantic Blue terror-drill exercise, held the previous May, ‘‘people kept saying it [7/7] was just like the desktop exercise we’d carried out three months earlier.’ P28. Why, how surprising. My book describes how this huge terror-drill was an important part of the imagining and rehearsal that went on prior to the 7/7 event. Hayman describes how a couple of thousand people took part, from all levels of government – kept totally secret, with no word of report breathed to us, the taxpayers who funded it. Its play-acted explosions went off on the London Underground, synchronising with a major international summit.

Maybe Mr Hayman should take a break, and watch a couple of films, how about V for Vendetta and The Matrix, and reflect upon this recent Russian opinion in Pravda:

‘Most of the ‘terrorist’ bomb attacks of the past sixty years have been false-flag attacks that were actually committed by the Israeli Mossad, the CIA, and British intelligence. For six decades the allied Western intelligence agencies have been carrying out an ongoing campaign to frame Muslims for bombings which were actually perpetrated by the Western intelligence agencies themselves.’ (4)

Ah, how true!

Harmless Pranksters get forty years

‘Its only bread’ remarked Muktar Said Abraham (MSI) to a bystander when the ‘bomb’ in his rucksack, comprising Chapati flour and peroxide, ‘went off’, or rather dribbled down onto the floor of the 28 bus, at Hackney, on July 21st, 2005. The bombs did not ‘fail’ to explode – this was the one point at which my book disagreed with Ahmed’s fine and in-depth analysis of this event – which he published in 2006, before the trial of the July 21st ‘bombers’ at Woolwich Crown Court. The only harm from this mock-terror was an asthma attack (so Wikipedia tells us), suffered by a bystander. My book sought for but did not find evidence that any bystander to these 21/7 events experienced terror. A certain amount of fear maybe, but not terror.

Admittedly they did chose a terrifying time to do it, two weeks after 7/7, but the inescapable fact is that none of them had bombs, ie anything which was capable of exploding. I went to the Pak Cosmetics shop in Finsbury Park where they had purchased the peroxide hair bleach, at a maximum of 12% concentration. The owner did seem to recall their visit, recorded on his CCTV. I also chatted to the very expert inorganic chemist at UCL’s chemistry department who had advised the defence in their trial (as a UCL staff member I was able to). After all, one could not help wondering, how come those lads had had such an outstandingly weak defence? Peroxide could be concentrated up to 50% by boiling, he told me – maybe, but you need 70% peroxide to explode, fifty percent is no use, and, more to the point, hair bleach is far from being pure peroxide and is most unlikely to concentrate if you try to boil it. In all the fuss and terror generated by the police and the media over the 21/7 pranksters, there was one and only one fact we really needed to know: what was the percentage concentration of the peroxide in those rucksacks? No-one was going to tell us that!

The onus should have been on the Defence to show that a bomb could be made from hair bleach, before wasting fifty million pounds of taxpayer’s money on another mega fake terror trial, quite apart from the money wasted on jailing sixteen people for all those years.

I and a colleague went to the trial of these five 21/7 ‘bombers’ – he reckoned we got in on account of my UCL staff card – and I stayed for one day, he for two: we heard MSI repeatedly affirming that they were not intending to harm anyone, they were only making a gesture, they wanted to give the British public a flavor of what it was like for Islamic nations to be bombed by the West. It was forbidden to take life or commit suicide for a Muslim, he explained. None of this explained why they had bought their peroxide from the Pak Cosmetics shop just prior to 7/7 – they were clearly being handled and manipulated by someone, I guess we will never know who. I never saw any mention of this in the British press: I believe you will only find an account of the motivation of the 21/7 group in my book. Elsewhere you will find them described as fiendish terrorists whose bombs luckily ‘failed’ to go off.

Andy Hayman’s book warbles on about how the hunt for these 21/7 ‘bombers was ‘the biggest ever manhunt in UK criminal history – and potentially the most dangerous,’ and quotes the judge’s verdict at the Woolwich Crown Court: ‘A viable, indeed very nearly successful attempt at mass murder .. it was long in the planning …designed for maximum impact … part of an Al-Qaeda sequence of events .. At least fifty people would have died, hundreds of people would have been wounded.’ Hayman adds, absurdly: ‘We should not forget that Muktar Said Abraham was a determined killer, whose sinister, callous wish was to perpetrate a worse atrocity than the July 7 attacks. The bombs he and his co-conspirators made were laced with screws, which would have torn into victims flesh, had the devices exploded properly.’

Those Who Create Delusion have to be able to project the emotions of hate and fear, which serve to block out normal, critical analysis. That is the skill they need to have. We’ve quoted the above delusional statement by Andy Hayman, effective both for terrorising the British public and ensuring the ‘anti-terror branch’ of the Met remains well-funded. He thereby gives us, The Phantom Menace.

That’s how it is created. Clever, isn’t it? The actual motives of the four, as eg Hussein Osman had clearly stated in Italy shortly after the event, whereby he and his accomplices ‘had not sought to kill anyone, not even themselves,’ cannot be discussed by the media. Indeed, anyone who even believes in these declared motives and says so is liable to be damned as ‘colluding with terrorists.’ The chemical fact that no bombs ever existed, that no harm could have been caused, that nothing could have exploded, was not discussed by the British media – and I believe was only discussed in one public context: Nafeez Ahmed and a retired bomb expert Colonel Wilde gave a few public talks. Ahmed’s uncle in Pakistan was gunned down in front of his wife and kids shortly after, and such talks ended. The public have to believe in and be frightened by the Enemy – that is the overriding imperative.

One of the 21/7 five, Manfo Asiedu (who speaks no English) turned, and witnessed against the others at the Woolwich trial: he allegedly lost his nerve and so left his rucksack under a bush in Battersea park, where it was conveniently found: this one was indeed ‘laced with screws,’ to quote Hayman. Despite such collaboration with the Met he still got 33 years! For comparison, in the July 7 story, nail-bombs were disclosed as being present in the Luton car-park, with frightening pictures (from America – the media found nothing odd about having ‘the story’ coming over from the US) of nails stuck all around bottles of an alleged explosive. There were however no 7/7 casualty reports involving nails or screws. Again, the Madrid train bombing of 2004: early the next morning after the event, a mystery ‘left behind’ rucksack was found, with a detonator (which conveniently led the police straight to some Muslim suspects) and with screws and nails in it (see chapter of my book on the Madrid bombing), however injured persons did not have injuries from screws or nails (5). In conclusion, that planted Battersea-park bomb was used by Hyman to make his untruthful (and terrifying) statement about the 21/7 ‘bombers.’

Hayman tells us how the four 21/7 ‘bombers’ were each jailed for forty years while Asiedu only got 33 years, plus various alleged accomplices (AY, WM, AS, SA, MA and IA) got between 6-17 years; while wives and girlfriends are also doing jail (YO, EG, MG, MK, FA), 3-15 years. But, what was the crime? Under Britain’s new anti-terror laws there doesn’t really have to be one. As long as you are Muslim you can be jailed merely because of what the police reckon you may have been intending to do. One needs to add here, that Britain’s police do not have the reputation of exceptionally high IQ. That is why, in my view, a crime needs to be defined as an act, which has taken place, preferably in public, causing harm that is in some way unacceptable.

Demise of Special Branch

Special Branch has enjoyed a worldwide reputation for crime detection for over a century – how odd that it should have been dissolved exactly around the time of 7/7! (Hayman, p22) Surely, that was just when it was most needed, to help ascertain who indeed were the guilty culprits? My book ventures to suggest that those responsible may actually be white and alive, not brown and dead. The new ‘anti-terror’ meme more or less commands the police to look in the wrong direction. Following 7/7, Special Branch then morphed into the absurdly Blairite ‘Anti-Terror Command,’ the very name of which more or less implies that Muslims are going to continue being arrested on suspicion of intending to hatch ‘terror.’ It presupposes that terrorists exist in Bush’s sense of ‘They hate our freedoms.’ That is not a path to any possible healing of our society.

Hayman now works for Murdoch’s News International – that most baneful, far-right influence upon British culture. A few years earlier Hayman had failed to investigate widespread phone-tapping by News of the World Murdoch cronies especially phone-tapping members of Britain’s royal family: so Hayman is now bought and caught, employed by

 ‘The very organisation that he failed to investigate properly in 2006. In other words, this is his payoff for not arresting Andy Coulson and other senior figures at the News of the World.

I guess that’ll keep him quiet.

1. Ahmed, The London Bombings, p.49.
2. Ibid p.44.
3. Here the argument, over the 91 and 30 buses, is by Muad’Dib in The Ripple Effect
4. Pravda, ‘The Illusion of democracy in the modern world’ 11/11/09
http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/11-11-2009/110420-democracy-0
5. For an excellent update, see March 11, 2004 Madrid: Was it really an Islamist Attack? (Voltaire Network).

20.3.2010

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