The Ross Report: The Latest From London
The Ross Report
by Richard Ross of Conservatives with Attitude!
From a senior Metropolitan London police official:
The impression we’re getting is that it was probably a ‘left-field job’ involving people who don’t tie in directly to prior intelligence. In other words, so far, there is no indication of involvement of people previously identified in other terrorism investigations. It’s still early and it may turn out to be someone who’s been monitored.
The working assumption is that - not that these are amateurs- because this is not an amateur bomb design - but they’re slightly ‘freelance’, still part of the same picture. They’re not in touch with al Qaeda but doing this for the same ideological reasons. However, I have to say this is entirely supposition at this point. There are some differences between this and typical al Qaeda plots, in that just about every al Qaeda incident has involved multiple explosions.
As far as we know, this was an isolated vehicle. So far, it doesn’t look like an attempted suicide bombing, but a car bomb the driver was intending to detonate remotely.
We don’t know the identity yet of driver. Investigators are going through the closed circuit material now, but hadn’t when I got my briefing. The car bomb technique has been used in Iraq, but it’s also similar to techniques talked about in previous trials here in the UK [i.e. Dhiren Barot]. Barot - a convert to Islam - was sentenced to life imprisonment in the UK last year, convicted of plotting to fill limousines with gas cannisters, petrol and shrapnel and park them outside nightclubs. He had an earlier plan, which he abandoned, to attack five financial landmarks in the United States: the New York Stock Exchange, the IMF, the World Bank, the Prudential Building in Newark, and the Citigroup tower in NYC.
They talked about vehicles filled with gas canisters. … Scotland Yard is not formally confirming the contents of the Mercedes in this case, but as far as I know it was filled with canisters of what we call camping gas [propane]. There was also loose petrol inside the car, petrol poured around car and petrol in canisters, as well as loose [camping] gas and the [camping] gas in canisters.
Definitely enough to have caused a big bang. This is a busy area that time of night. There could have been a fireball that could have penetrated the club, and with the nails, it could have caused serious casualties…. Investigators obviously are following up on the car. They will check the vehicle identification number, but you never know, those can be falsified. So it may take some time to trace it.”
-- 'The Commish' A.J. Sparxx