Partridge
06-24-2006, 03:37 PM
IT expert: I worked with 7/7 bombers and warned police
The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlondon/story/0,,1804936,00.html?gusrc=rss)
· Intelligence on bombers sent to detectives in 2003
· Technician helped make anti-western propaganda
A computer expert who worked alongside two of the July 7 bombers claims today that he tried to warn the police about their activities almost two years before the suicide attacks.Speaking for the first time about his work, Martin Gilbertson, 45, says he produced anti-western propaganda videos, secured websites and encrypted emails for Muslims who were involved in an Islamic bookshop and a youth centre attended by bombers Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer. Mr Gilbertson was also employed to establish firewalls that would safeguard both places from outside interference.
By October 2003, he says he was so alarmed by what he was producing in Beeston, West Yorkshire that he went to the local Holbeck police station, saying he had material and names he wanted to deliver to anti-terrorist officers. He was told to post his material, and did so, to West Yorkshire police headquarters in Wakefield. The package contained DVD material he had compiled for circulation by the bookshop, a list of names including Khan and Tanweer and a covering letter giving a contact telephone number.
He claims he heard nothing until he was interviewed three times by two officers from the Metropolitan police, having contacted them after the explosions.
"I wish I could have had some access to MI5," says Mr Gilbertson, "I probably could have got them in there, before the bombs went off".
Mr Gilbertson today tells for the first time how he encountered the bombers after being introduced to three men at a party in Beeston to celebrate the September 11 attacks .
Over two years, he was commissioned to make "presentations" in the backrooms of the Iqra bookshop, and at Hamara Youth Access Point, established later and visited regularly by Khan, a youth worker, and Tanweer. Khan and Tanweer were also, says Mr Gilbertson, involved in the Mullah Crew, a local gang which used to train at what was known as the "al-Qaida gym". Mr Gilbertson says the gym, which he visited, was linked to the bookshop, a few metres away.
Some of Mr Gilbertson's presentations showed children in Iraq and the Palestinian territories mutilated or killed by American or Israeli forces. At one point, he says, he reached a "last straw" and tried to alert the police. He fled the area, "sick and tired of the religious racism, sick of being bombarded". Attempts to convert Mr Gilbertson to Islam failed. "On reflection," he says, "I don't know which way round it was. Whether the people at Iqra were putting Khan up to it, or whether Khan was using them. The path of least resistance is to say that the people at Iqra were creating the atmosphere in which Khan worked. Khan was taking advantage of the atmosphere they were creating ... It was an atmosphere conducive to the bombers, a bedrock."
West Yorkshire police told the Guardian: "It's going to be almost impossible to trace what happened to a specific item of mail. It's impossible to say whether this made its way into the intelligence system, whether it was discounted as low-level intelligence or whether it was acted upon in some way". There is no evidence to implicate any of the workers at the Iqra bookshop or the Hamara centre in the July 7 plot.
Scotland Yard would not comment on Mr Gilbertson's claims, but it confirmed that a telephone number provided by him was for one of its anti-terrorist officers.
The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlondon/story/0,,1804936,00.html?gusrc=rss)
· Intelligence on bombers sent to detectives in 2003
· Technician helped make anti-western propaganda
A computer expert who worked alongside two of the July 7 bombers claims today that he tried to warn the police about their activities almost two years before the suicide attacks.Speaking for the first time about his work, Martin Gilbertson, 45, says he produced anti-western propaganda videos, secured websites and encrypted emails for Muslims who were involved in an Islamic bookshop and a youth centre attended by bombers Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer. Mr Gilbertson was also employed to establish firewalls that would safeguard both places from outside interference.
By October 2003, he says he was so alarmed by what he was producing in Beeston, West Yorkshire that he went to the local Holbeck police station, saying he had material and names he wanted to deliver to anti-terrorist officers. He was told to post his material, and did so, to West Yorkshire police headquarters in Wakefield. The package contained DVD material he had compiled for circulation by the bookshop, a list of names including Khan and Tanweer and a covering letter giving a contact telephone number.
He claims he heard nothing until he was interviewed three times by two officers from the Metropolitan police, having contacted them after the explosions.
"I wish I could have had some access to MI5," says Mr Gilbertson, "I probably could have got them in there, before the bombs went off".
Mr Gilbertson today tells for the first time how he encountered the bombers after being introduced to three men at a party in Beeston to celebrate the September 11 attacks .
Over two years, he was commissioned to make "presentations" in the backrooms of the Iqra bookshop, and at Hamara Youth Access Point, established later and visited regularly by Khan, a youth worker, and Tanweer. Khan and Tanweer were also, says Mr Gilbertson, involved in the Mullah Crew, a local gang which used to train at what was known as the "al-Qaida gym". Mr Gilbertson says the gym, which he visited, was linked to the bookshop, a few metres away.
Some of Mr Gilbertson's presentations showed children in Iraq and the Palestinian territories mutilated or killed by American or Israeli forces. At one point, he says, he reached a "last straw" and tried to alert the police. He fled the area, "sick and tired of the religious racism, sick of being bombarded". Attempts to convert Mr Gilbertson to Islam failed. "On reflection," he says, "I don't know which way round it was. Whether the people at Iqra were putting Khan up to it, or whether Khan was using them. The path of least resistance is to say that the people at Iqra were creating the atmosphere in which Khan worked. Khan was taking advantage of the atmosphere they were creating ... It was an atmosphere conducive to the bombers, a bedrock."
West Yorkshire police told the Guardian: "It's going to be almost impossible to trace what happened to a specific item of mail. It's impossible to say whether this made its way into the intelligence system, whether it was discounted as low-level intelligence or whether it was acted upon in some way". There is no evidence to implicate any of the workers at the Iqra bookshop or the Hamara centre in the July 7 plot.
Scotland Yard would not comment on Mr Gilbertson's claims, but it confirmed that a telephone number provided by him was for one of its anti-terrorist officers.