There were 24 people on the lower deck of the 30 bus when it blew up, according to the Inquest. Whereas according to Daniel Obachike’s book of 2006, “‘It was just me, the driver and four females on the lower deck as it edged down towards Tavistock Square.” He always stuck to that story when anyone asked him. I suggest he was never on that bus.

The ‘4th Bomb’ is is the self-published testimony from the alleged London 7/7 bus bomb survivor Daniel Obachike. I used to know various people who believed his story, but such people are now quite hard to find. People slowly realised that he just could never come up with supporting evidence.

His Deceptive Promise

I found out about Daniel the hard way.

Mr Obachike offered to make me a website for my book. I paid him 200-300 pounds and he did the site www.terroronthetube.com. There was just one problem: I got locked out of it and could not enter! When I complained to him about this, he eventually produced for me a blog http://kollerstrom.wordpress.com which I had  not asked for & didn’t want, and I thought that was rather impertinent – and again, I had no means of getting into it.

Worse, Mr Obschike then started posting up his material on the site he had designed for me, with his crackpot views about how the ‘We are Change’ movement were a lot of MI5 agents. (London’s ‘9/11 truth movement’ had a group split off and be part of the  ‘We are Change’ movement, a direct-action group. I went to visit them in the winter of 2009 where they were living next to Kew Bridge: they were in benders on some muddy patch. It seemed unlikely that MOD agents would live in this manner, to say the least. They were rather livid about what Daniel had done in framing them. I reassured them that I did not believe a word of it.)

But, this unhinged argument was irrelevant to the theme of my website as well as not being wanted by me. As various people told me, Daniel never provided any evidence for this claim, concerning ‘We are Change’. Due to the extremely simplistic and brief comments Mr Obachike was posting up on my site without my consent, it became the main Google site for anyone inputting my book’s title.  The site was basically advertising his book, using my title – rather clever. Ah, so that was what I had paid him for…   (I finally got the site off him, but it took a while)

A Journalist’s view of Daniel

By this time I was being reminded of a comment by the journalist whom Daniel mentioned in his book, whom he approached a week after the event with his story. The journalist didn’t print it, and Daniel made up some story about why he had not wanted to. I and a colleague (Kenyon Gibson) managed to contact the News of the world journalist Michael Duffy (p.93). He confirmed that the meeting had indeed taken place on July 12th, but that he was not prepared to write up D.O.’s story because it lacked any corroboration.  He told K.G. he had experienced Daniel as a ‘fantasist’ who could give no corroboration for his story.

While I innocently believed that Daniel was constructing this website for me, we had a few chats together, and I would now and then ask him for a source or for some corroboration for some part of his story – and never, not once, did he give me any. He would say he would dig it out or send it to me, but nothing ever came.  If a public enquiry were held, would anyone on that No. 30 bus corroborate that he had been there? I’d be surprised.

As an example, let’s consider the reason he gave, why the journalist Mr Duffy would not print his story. Duffy showed him a picture of Hasib Hussein, and asked him to confirm that he had seen that young man on the 30 bus. But, Daniel explains, he would not confirm this official story, that Hasib Hussein had blown up the bus, or that he had been on it. He wouldn’t, and therefore he tells his readers (p94), the journalist would not print his story. The main problem here is that the picture was not actually released by the Met until two days later on the 14th: ‘We have this afternoon released a CCTV image and a passport photograph of Hasib Hussain, aged 18, who died in the explosion on the bus in Tavistock Square.’ There is no way that journalist could have been in possession of such an image!  The journalist Michael Duffy gave a pithy reply when Kenyon put this story of Daniel’s to him.

His book The 4th Bomb weaves a load of sexual fantasies about one Hilda Edionseri, who was allegedly there at the blast or just after, and I can’t help wondering whether anyone could get her testimony? Was she there? One gathers that she did not approve of being included in his book in that manner.

My Chapter on Tavistock Square

Fortunately, I was given firm advice (from Kenyon Gibson) not to take Daniel Obachike’s testimony seriously, when composing my chapter, in ‘Terror on the Tube,’ on Tavistock Square. I may tend to be rather credulous of what people tell me, but Kenyon had had the experience of phoning the journalist – so, here is what I put about D.O.:

‘Testimonies

Daniel recalled how, ‘It was just me, the driver and four females on the lower deck as it edged down towards Tavistock Square.’ Regrettably, Daniel only started publishing his account a year after the event. We compare his account with the far earlier and therefore more reliable testimony of Regina Friel:

‘I got on the first bus heading for Islington. I managed to get a seat. A passenger commented that King’s Cross was only a 10-minute walk. Lots of people got off. A tall black man was the only person left standing on the bottom deck. He appeared frustrated with the traffic. I looked out the window and saw a sign for the British Medical Association, Tavistock Square. Suddenly there was a massive explosion. My only memory is of my body being thrown with such violence. Then nothing. When I was conscious, I was dazed and confused and there was a terrible, intense burning smell. Then I noticed the man on the floor. I couldn’t see his face and the only reason I knew it was the same man was from the colour of his top.’ (11)

Was it Anthony Fatayi-Williams who was there lying dead, whose uncle Thomas Ikimi made a film on the subject? (Chapter 1) One would hardly describe him as tall, he was around 5’ 10.”  Ms Friel expressed concern as to whether the man lying on the floor is still alive, whereas Daniel’s account has him leaping up from the floor and running out of the bus door mere seconds after the explosion. Daniel is definitely tall.’

Readers were here given no assurance that he was on the bus. I counted not four but at least seven lower-deck survivors. Women who gave testimony were: Louise Barry, Reva Cope, Regina Friel, Anat Rosenberg, Catherine Klestov, Nina Lodzak, and possibly Angela Griffiths; plus an unnamed male.

Reading the book review by the July 7th team, I finally have to agree about the way evidence or confirmation always fails to materialise concerning Daniel’s story. I spent quite a while trying to believe him. He did make quite a bit out of his self-published book, selling a thousand copies at ten pounds a time.  In his book he contiually fantasises about MI5 ‘agents’ following him, as he likewise avers concering the book launch I had the misfortune to share with him, on the site I paid him to set up: I do not confirm that such agents were present!

Was Daniel on the Bus?

After being hurled to the floor by the blast, D.O reckons he leapt up again and sprinted (‘he hit the ground running’) out of the bus, then after running away from it he turned round and saw: ‘the tail end of the bus’s roof completing a slow motion pirouette in the air as it floated gently to earth.’ (p.23) Clearly that would have happened long before he got out of the bus, but is that mere poetic licence? Likewise when he hears the Greek bus driver reciting Hail Mary’s after the blast – a Greek Orthodox person would not do that.

Before the blast he was standing quite near the front, whereby he could see the cars in front on the bus etc. His whole story depends upon this. He was near enough the front to hear the bus driver lean out of his window and ask the way (!), in front of the BMA at Tavistock Square, just before the explosion. Then he is lifted up by the blast and blown backwards towards the bus’s  middle doors. He then peers out through a gap in the middle doors. Do you want to believe, that a blast at the back of the bus knocked a big 6’3″ man backwards towards where the blast came from?

Politely, while sharing a Guinness with him (OK, maybe that was why I agreed to pay his rather high sum for setting up a WordPress website – the hope of putting a few questions to him) I asked him, was there any corroboration of his presence on the bus that morning? He gave me I recall just the same reply that he evidently gave Bridget Dunne of the J7 group, about a cyclist/courier who had seen him running away from the blast. Andrew Childes was an early witness to the blast:

Bridget,
I remember the cyclist/courier who saw me running away from the bus.
His name was Andrew Childes. They edited out his story because he had
thought I was the bus driver on account of my grey shirt and dark grey
trousers and the next day the driver was named as George Psaradackis.
Daniel

(She posted this letter up on a forum so I guess I’m allowed to quote it.) That witness did indeed testify to certain features of that blast, but not that. DO replied that this testimony had been ‘edited out’ from later versions of the news report. O yeah? Then the witness himself denied that he had said this – here is what he wrote on the J7 forum:

andrew childs
I can confirm that I absolutely did NOT say in any of my statements to the press that I had seen a black man running away from the scene. Best regards AC

Now, that does really spell curtains for Daniel’s story. Let’s end with a comment by Bridget Dunne, a learned scholar on matters 7/7:

The evidence for DO’s story is lacking. He has also taken to accusing everyone that doesn’t ‘believe’ him of being an MOD agent, and he is very content to circulate his own conjectures on blogs and websites without any evidence to back up these accusations.

Or, as the authoritative new ‘7/7: Seeds of Deconstruction’ video (part 14: The No. 30 Bus) puts it:

Nothing in Daniel’s story is corroborated by photographic evidence or other eye-witnesses at Tavistock Square.

Then, he announces himself as ‘World Famous Truth Activist & Author in conjunction with Floran’ (‘Floran Books’ is the name he made up for his publisher) for a meeting at the Conway Hall, that was in the end cancelled. Daniel’s friend Christian Small really died on that morning, but did he fake the rest of it?

P.S – Here is a comment from ‘Stefan’ one of the We  Are Change people targeted by D.O.:

Daniel hired a bouncer to stop anyone filming his last “lecture” and threw out one person for trying to do so. The next day he wrote up the event with a version of events bearing not even the slightest resemblance of reality.

26.5.2010

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