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Telegraph
08-07-2025
- Telegraph
Britain's craven appeasement of Islam is an insult to the victims of 7/7
Twenty years ago this week I was pottering in the kitchen when the phone rang. It was so long ago that the phone was a landline which sat on the worktop almost buried under school detritus. The caller was Laura, my children's babysitter, and a much-loved member of our extended family. Laura was gabbling, telling me not to worry. Something about being on the train but 'not that carriage'. What train? Why did the carriage matter? 'Laura, you're not making sense, slow down.' Normally, she was the kind of chipper, capable, gale-force girl you would have nominated for Best Person in a Crisis. 'Alli, I want you all to know I'm OK,' her voice broke and she hung up. It was a couple of hours before I understood. Laura had been caught up in a monstrous attack on our capital city by four Islamist terrorists, three of them second-generation Pakistani immigrants from Leeds. Laura was 22 years old and, on the morning of July 7 2005, she was on the way to work in the City with her mother, Katie, when a young man her own age called Shehzad Tanweer boarded their eastbound Circle line train and blew himself up. He murdered seven people and savagely injured 172 more. Down in the Aldgate tunnel it was a scene from Dante's Inferno. Flames shot up a pole close to where mother and daughter were standing. There was a stench of burning flesh. Tanweer had detonated a bomb in the next carriage. In the panic and carnage that ensued, Laura, a volunteer for St John's Ambulance, sought out the first aid kit. When she finally got the box open, all that was inside was an ice-scraper. It was the first, but not the last, time that day that the system would let the people down. Laura wanted to go into the neighbouring 'bomb carriage' to help the wounded, but her mother refused point blank. Some deep instinct told Katie that, whatever was in that hellish place of smoke and screams, her child would not be able to bear it. Laura busied herself ripping up clothing to make slings, tended the injured as best she could, and waited. And waited. Surely, help would come soon? It did not. A single image would haunt Laura. A man in his underpants (the rest of his clothes had been blown off) was kneeling by the side of the track as the dazed survivors walked past him. The charred figure looked as if he was covered in a thick layer of pitch-black tar through which blood was bubbling up. Laura wanted to stay and comfort him, but she was already taking care of two girls and her mum. She walked ahead of them, kicking a chunk of body out of the way before the others could see it. 'I can get mum up to the surface and come back for him,' she told herself. For years after, when Laura thought of the man in the tunnel, she cried with shame that she didn't do something. I will never forget how distressed our brave young friend was by what she saw as the failure of the emergency services to get to the survivors quickly enough. 'I honestly felt like they'd left us to die,' she said. When Laura and her stricken little platoon finally got to the surface, over an hour after the explosion, our respectful, law-abiding babysitter saw a police officer and greeted him: 'About time. Where the hell have you been?' A City broker called Michael Henning concurred. In 2010, he told the 7/7 inquest that victims had suffered agonising deaths of 20, 30, 40 minutes. When Mr Henning eventually made it to the surface, he saw a group of firefighters and shouted: 'Why aren't you down there? There are people dying.' The firefighters turned their backs and seemed too embarrassed to look at him, although he claims one young fireman admitted they were worried about a second bomb. Mr Henning contrasted the risk-averse rules of contemporary Britain with the spontaneous courage shown by his grandfather's rescue team during the Blitz. 'They didn't worry about unexploded [German] bombs. They would go in even if the building was on fire.' To be fair, the emergency services have always denied that staff put their own safety before that of trapped passengers (it is revealing, I think, that some of the bravest rescuers that day were off-duty emergency workers who were free to ignore protocols). But in his book Into the Darkness: An Account of 7/7, Peter Zimonjic stated for the record: 'An ambulance would not arrive at the entrance to Aldgate station until 24 minutes after the explosion. The paramedics would not get into the tunnels for a further 25 minutes after that.' The charred man Laura had seen was left alone with his fear and his unimaginable anguish. This is not the heroic account of July 7 that the authorities chose to recall. But, two decades on, that abandonment of the dying and the shell-shocked works pretty well as a metaphor for the British state's cowardly handling of the Islamist threat, I think. Bury it deep, then, when something awful happens, as it inevitably will, claim that 'we did everything we possibly could', and, if British people get angry that such barbaric fanatics are let into our country in huge numbers, blame those people for causing division and hate. We saw that playbook in full swing on the 20th anniversary of the atrocities this week. Yes, the commemorative service at St Paul's, where relatives broke down as they read out the names of the victims, was hauntingly lovely, with white petals falling like blossom from the cathedral's dome. But the dead were dishonoured by the official denial and deflection found in the consoling platitudes carefully chosen to mark the occasion. The King and the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, both preferred to accentuate the positive, of communities coming together, and never once mentioned the ideology that inspired the carnage. Charles spoke euphemistically of 'tragic events'. As if a blood-curdling assault on the Western way of life were some sort of road-traffic accident, not the most devastating Islamist-planned attack since 9/11 (two of the London bombers had made recent trips to Pakistan). The King is a good man who only wants the best for everybody, but he can be painfully naïve when it comes to the Islamist threat which is apparent to his increasingly alarmed subjects. Privately, millions of Britons have come to agree with Enoch Powell on overwhelming levels of immigration from hostile, incompatible cultures: 'It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre.' Mayor Khan, who has allowed supporters of jihad to occupy our capital every weekend shouting vile anti-Semitic slogans, said: 'I have a clear message for those who seek to spread division and sow hatred – you will never win… We will always choose hope over fear and unity over division as we continue building a safer London for everyone.' Seriously – a safer London? Who was it, two decades ago, that set out to 'spread division and sow hatred'? If you are a simple soul like me, you might assume the haters were the ones with bombs in their backpacks. It was clearly too awkward, though, for the Mayor to refer specifically to the British-born Muslims who despised our country so much they set out to kill as many innocent people as possible. Khan's is an attitude brilliantly satirised by the late comedian Norm Macdonald who tweeted: 'What terrifies me is if ISIS was to detonate a nuclear device and kill 50 million Americans. Imagine the backlash against peaceful Muslims!' We may laugh at that, but after every single terrorist attack on British soil, the official tactic remains the same: swivel attention, with indecent haste, away from the appalling suffering of the victims and on to the 'racists', the so-called 'far-Right' who we are told will use the opportunity to stir up anti-Muslim feeling. (Look at the draconian crackdown after the Southport massacre of little girls on armchair tweeters like Lucy Connolly, while a police officer told Muslim counter-protesters to 'discard [any weapons] at the mosque' to avoid being arrested!) Invariably, the Home Secretary and the BBC will then mention the 'terror threat from the far-Right', pretending it is equivalent. The facts beg to differ. Since the 7/7 London bombings, Islamist extremists have killed over 40 people in the UK; the far-Right has killed three. The vast majority of suspects on MI5's terror watchlist are jihadists – around 43,000, which equals about one in a hundred Muslims in the UK. Seventeen months after the 2005 atrocities, prime minister Tony Blair gave an impressively hard-hitting lecture on religious tolerance and cultural assimilation. As good as admitting Labour's favoured multiculturalism project had failed, Blair called on Muslims to integrate into British society, warning that British values take precedence over any cultural traditions or faiths. 'Belief in democracy, the rule of law, tolerance, equal treatment for all, respect for this country and its shared heritage – that is where we come together, it is what we hold in common; it is what gives us the right to call ourselves British. At that point no distinctive culture or religion supersedes our duty to be part of an integrated United Kingdom.' Blair conceded that 'there are extremists in other communities. But the reason we are having this debate is not generalised extremism. It is a new and virulent form of ideology associated with a minority of our Muslim community. It is not a problem with Britons of Hindu, Afro-Caribbean, Chinese or Polish origin.' Such honesty has rarely been repeated by our political class, which, in the intervening years, seems to have become increasingly afraid of what they have unleashed. When he became prime minister, David Cameron did tell me what had shocked him most was being told about 'the scale of the Islamist terror threat'. You won't hear anything like that from Sir Keir Starmer, who mentioned the risk of becoming 'an island of strangers' in a recent speech – one of the few true things that slithery, shapeshifter has uttered – but then imaginatively claimed not to have read the speech too closely. Fear of losing Labour's Muslim vote seems to have eclipsed the fear of Britain disintegrating. Tony Blair outlined six ways multiculturalism and integration could be promoted, including a crackdown on foreign preachers (imams spouting hatred of the West), investigation of forced marriages, and the refusal of some mosques to allow women to worship there and to participate more generally. The government would also demand a 'shared common language' and 'allegiance to the rule of law; nobody can legitimately ask to stand outside the law of the nation'. How well did all that work out? Well, imams are still spouting anti-Semitic and anti-British rhetoric. Young men from Pakistani-origin communities are put on trial for mass rape and explain they have been taught by their religious authorities to regard white girls as 'chewing gum in the road'. There are now at least 85 sharia councils in the UK. Not legally recognised courts, in theory they do not have the authority to overrule British law, but the fact they exist at all should be anathema to an equal justice system. As for a 'shared common language', the census of 2011 found there were around 846,000 Muslim women living in England; of those, almost 190,000, or 22 per cent, said that they could speak English 'not well' (152,000) or 'not at all' (38,000). (Some 90,000 Muslim men, or 10 per cent, said the same.) More up-to-date figures are hard to come by, but as the practice of importing virgin brides from Pakistan and Bangladesh continues unchallenged, it is hard to imagine that situation has improved much. In fact, as recent figures cited by Prof Matt Goodwin make clear, the establishment of de facto ghettos and alienation from the mainstream proceeds apace. In Luton, 79 per cent of babies have at least one foreign-born parent, Slough (78 per cent), Leicester (71 per cent). Blair's hope of full Muslim integration into British society is now a distant pipe dream. But don't worry, folks! Deputy PM Angela Rayner is working on a new legal definition of Islamophobia, so very soon the problem will go away. Because we will be jailed if we mention anything to do with 'Muslimness'. Twenty years after one of the most heinous terror attacks in British history, our borders are effectively open. Some 20,000 undocumented young males from backward, misogynistic cultures, often exporters of Islamist violence, have entered the UK by boat since the start of this year, and are being seeded in towns up and down the land to try and hide them from a furious populace that is done with immigration. There is now overt sectarianism in Parliament, with Muslim MPs forming their own political alliance with Jeremy Corbyn, trying to affect British foreign policy in favour of Islamic fundamentalists. Another unholy alliance of far-Left, woke Corbynists, Hamas supporters and Greens is poised to form a new party – working title: Jezbollah. On the anniversary of 7/7, I asked someone who was operationally very senior in counter terrorism, both nationally and internationally: 'How bad is the Islamist threat today compared to July 2005?' 'The truth is the threat has grown inexorably,' he replied. 'Perversely, the reason why there are no real terror attacks now is because we are better at monitoring them since the London attack, but also because they are getting what they want. We are where they want us to be. We have their religion enshrined outside of UK law and their community leaders have got the police under control. They are wily; when they see do-gooders they walk all over them. Like the scorpion and the frog it is what they do. The numbers are now so huge that our own government has sleepwalked into a nightmare of extraordinary proportions. They are building while we are continually lying to ourselves.' This former senior figure in counter-terrorism is one of many people who now talk openly about the chilling possibility of civil war in this country. Let's hope it never comes to that, but, at the very least, it is hard not to feel huge sorrow at how the memory of the 7/7 victims has been betrayed by the craven appeasement of our worst enemy. Our institutions may be cowardly, but individual strength and determination remain. At the 7/7 inquest all those years ago, a softly spoken man called Philip Duckworth said he had been thrown by the blast from Shehzad Tanweer's suicide bomb out of the doors of the carriage at Aldgate and into the tunnel. He was blind in one eye because he had been hit by a splinter from the bomber's shin bone. Lying semi-conscious on the track, Philip heard someone say: 'Leave him, he's gone.' So incensed was he, that he hauled himself up on to his knees and willed himself to live. Our wonderful, brave Laura walked past him at that defiant moment of resurrection. Yes, it was the charred man, back from the dead. That kind of courage is in the DNA of our people, and it has served us well all these centuries; no terrorists or alien creed will vanquish it, nor take our country from us.
Telegraph
07-07-2025
- Telegraph
‘We'll never forget': How London marked the 20th anniversary of the 7/7 bombings
Thelma Stober was drifting in and out of consciousness by the time two men appeared, coming towards her through the darkness carrying a stretcher. She was trapped underneath the carriage at Aldgate station; part of the train door was impaled in her right thigh, and her left foot was twisted backwards. Terrified she would be presumed dead and left behind, she had tried to wriggle to safety but found she couldn't move. Two men – her 'guardian angels', as she now calls them – spotted her in the wreckage. One stayed with her and kept her talking, the other went to get help. 'Eventually, after what seemed like such a long time, two men came with a stretcher and took me out.' But it wasn't until today, 20 years later, at a service at St Paul's Cathedral, that Stober met the men who carried her to safety. Standing outside the cathedral, moments after meeting them inside, she seems quietly stunned. 'In January, when the BBC programme [about the 7/7 attacks] came out, I saw myself for the first time being taken on a stretcher up the stairs out of the station,' she says. 'They were the ones.' Stober, who lost a foot in the attack and suffered internal injuries, was 38-years-old on July 7 2005 when she stepped onto a Tube to go to work and, unknowingly, stood next to a man called Shehzad Tanweer. Tanweer was about to detonate one of four bombs that would bring death and devastation to the capital in a coordinated attack – the worst act of terrorism Britain had seen since Lockerbie, and the country's first Islamist suicide attack. Stober's life changed irrevocably that day, and tied her for evermore to those four strangers who helped her, as well as the 770 who were wounded and the 52 who lost their lives. When the bomb went off, Stober, a lawyer who had spent the previous night celebrating London winning the 2012 Olympics, having worked on the bid, was thrown onto the tracks. 'When I woke up and I found myself partially underneath the train, I tried to get up. When there's a disaster, they try to save people who are alive, so I thought if I was still lying there they would think that I was dead,' she says. Tony Silvestro, a plain clothes police officer, spotted her. 'He said 'lie down because you might have significant internal injuries.'' Moments later, Colin Pettet, a passenger who was unharmed, noticed Stober as he was being escorted across the tracks and made a beeline for her. 'He came and sat by me and used his jacket to cover me because my clothes were burnt. He kept asking me questions. 'What's your name? Are you married?' 'I remember it vividly. I said to him, 'Why did you ask me all those questions?' What I found out is that I was in and out of consciousness, and he was trying to keep me alive.' Pettet would later tell an inquest how he struggled to find help for Stober, saying she was, 'screaming to me that she was dying'. Prince William comforts the families of victims Outside the cathedral, where the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh and Sir Keir Starmer joined mourners to mark the anniversary, Pettet finds Stober to tell her how brave she has been. In the service, she stood before the congregation with Saba Edwards, the daughter of Behnaz Mozakka, who died in the King's Cross bomb, and read out the names of all those who lost their lives. While they spoke, 52,000 white paper petals floated from the dome of St Paul's over people's heads, spiralling slowly to the ground like gentle snowfall. Pettet and Stober embrace. She calls over her son, Lewis, to have him take a photograph of them. 'You've got taller since I last saw you,' she tells Pettet. 'You've got shorter,' he replies. They part ways – Stober has to get across town for the next service in Hyde Park, where she will accompany Prince William in a wreath-laying ceremony at the 7/7 memorial. They smile at one another and wave goodbye, their eyes conveying what words cannot. At a series of memorial services across the capital, attended by survivors, victims' families, and members of the emergency services, there was a shared disbelief that two decades have passed since that terrible day, when terror ripped through London. The day began with a wreath-laying ceremony at the 7/7 memorial, attended by the Prime Minister, London Mayor, Sir Sadiq Khan, and Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Mark Rowley. The service of commemoration at St Paul's followed, with Tony Blair, who was prime minister at the time of the attack, Theresa May and Kemi Badenoch among the congregation. Later, at the memorial in Hyde Park, Prince William joined a smaller gathering – just survivors and bereaved family members – for an intimate ceremony where the Prince sat among mourners and listened to speeches. Afterwards, he seemed to melt into the crowd, putting his arm around those that needed comfort, taking pictures with others, and offering words of solace to people who appreciated his presence. Martin Hart lost his father, Giles, in the bus explosion in Tavistock Square. The Prince stood talking to him and his girlfriend, Lauren Malone, for a few minutes after the service. 'He asked who we were here for, which I thought was really nice,' says Malone. 'He didn't just say hello and walk away, he asked who we were here for and asked us how we were feeling. We were really grateful for his time and attention. 'He spoke about how it's great to see the power of community and wished us well. He felt like a participant rather than someone off to the side which I appreciated.' For Hart, the anniversary is always a 'tough' day. 'But it's good to be around people with similar stories.' Kemi Lasisi-Ajao, who works in Transport for London's incident care team, was working in the Royal London Hospital on July 7, and was inspired to work for TfL after seeing the victims coming through accident and emergency. She joined two months later. She told the PA news agency that it was an honour to meet the Prince, telling him how she had shaken the late Queen's hand when she visited after the attack. He responded: 'Wow, are you kidding? Twenty years ago you met my grandmother.' Stober sat next to the Prince, who appeared to be a reassuring presence at her side during this final, emotional event of the day. Addressing the crowd, she spoke of her continued disbelief that what had been a 'beautiful blue sky morning' had turned to devastation. She spoke of the injuries she still lives with (in 2019, shrapnel was found lodged in her brain) and described what happened as 'an assault on fundamental democratic principles that are essential to a free society.' You could quite understand why, after all this time, she might not want to stand in front of hundreds of people and once again go over the trauma she experienced. But earlier in the day, at St Paul's, Stober, 58, tells The Telegraph why she feels it is essential to tell her story. 'I can stand here today and talk to you,' she says. 'Fifty-two people were killed by a reckless act of evil. As we read their names, 52,000 petals were dropped. Even though they are not with us, we'll never forget them. 'When I speak, I speak not just on behalf of the survivors, but also on behalf of those who lost their lives. 'At the end of the day, as much as we've got challenges to navigate, we're here. Those are lives lost. Parents, children, lost forever. What would their lives have been today? They've never had that opportunity.' During the service at St Paul's, the Very Rev Andrew Tremlett, the Dean of St Paul's, spoke of 7/7 as 'a moment that left deep scars in the soul of our capital'. He urged a renewal of a 'shared commitment to peace, justice and reconciliation', while Dame Sarah Mullally, the Rt Rev Bishop of London, spoke of the 'extraordinary spirit of survival' displayed by Londoners that day. Philip Duckworth, a survivor of the Aldgate bomb, said a prayer 'for all those who witnessed devastation, and for those whose lives were forever changed'. For many, the day offered the chance to reconnect with people they may not have seen since the last major memorial 10 years ago. Jo, a counsellor who supported bereaved families and survivors in the immediate aftermath of the attack, came to pay her respects to 'the people that had gone', and to see 'how the people who were left behind were doing'. 'We were all part of that same journey. It will be [with them] for their whole life. You never forget it, you just become accustomed to it. It never really goes away.' Mick Ellis was the incident commander at Holloway fire station on the day of the attack. The things he saw that day have never left him. 'Years of training, years of preparation. You never believe it will happen, and then on that morning I can remember turning into Upper Wayward Place and sitting in the front knowing you were in charge of it, and just thinking: it's happened. It's finally happened.' He recalls instructing his team to get all the equipment ready while he walked through the wreckage of the bus in Tavistock Square, surveying the scene. 'It was probably the longest walk I've ever done. Everyone was on the floor. It was just not something you can absorb. Everything goes in slow motion. Your brain is trying to compute what's happening and just slows everything down. And then the noise comes.' He will never forget one man in particular, a young man called Sam Ly, who had been sitting on the top deck and later died of his injuries. 'He was in a tragic state. But I vividly remember him saying to me, 'I was only going to work, all I was doing was going to work'. 'And he couldn't comprehend – nor could any of us – what had happened.'
Arab News
07-07-2025
- Politics
- Arab News
How the 7/7 bombings impacted British society and why it remains relevant 20 years on
LONDON: On July 7, 2005, four men joined millions of commuters during London's morning rush hour, making their way into the UK capital's labyrinthine public transport network. At around 8:49 a.m., Shehzad Tanweer, from Leeds in the north of England, detonated a home-made bomb on a Circle Line train between Liverpool Street Station and Aldgate. Within 90 seconds, Mohammad Siddique Khan, also from Leeds, blew himself up on a second Circle Line train between Edgware Road and Paddington station, and Germaine Lindsay, from Aylesbury, bombed a Piccadilly Line train as it left Kings Cross St Pancras, heading towards Russell Square. The blasts killed 42 people, including the three bombers, and left hundreds more wounded. Nearly an hour later, at 9:47 a.m., 18-year-old Hasib Hussein attacked the number 30 bus, traveling from Marble Arch to Hackney Wick, at Tavistock Square. The bus had driven via Euston Station, where commuters, exiting the London Underground, had been forced to make alternative transport arrangements due to the earlier attacks on the tube. The fourth explosion left another 13 people dead, blowing the roof of the double-decker clean off. Adel Darwish, the veteran parliamentary reporter and historian, recalled that the day had started like any other. 'I was on my way to Parliament. I was waiting for the tube, and then there was some kind of disruption to the network. I took a cab and went to Parliament,' he told Arab News. On arrival, Darwish recalled how he had been on his way to a briefing about UK involvement in the Middle East on the other side of Parliament Square, when he suddenly became aware of how empty the normally bustling center of British politics was. 'For the first time, you could actually see some special forces from the police with guns. I mean, that is something we're not used to. It's not like America. So, that was something, some kind of feeling of there being something alien that was happening.' Asharq Al-Awsat columnist Eyad Abu Chakra was also on his way in to work at his central London offices at the time of the attacks. 'When I left home, I saw on teletext that there was an incident on a bus,' he said. 'When I arrived at Waterloo (Station) … it was so crowded. There was a police presence. You could tell there was something big.' In the days before social media, and in the heat of the confusion, Darwish said information was scarce. 'The telephone networks started to go in and out,' he said, describing how signals were affected by a sudden surge in people in London attempting to contact loved ones and find out what had happened. Chakra added: 'I started to receive phone calls from colleagues from the Middle East asking me, because they thought that I should know much better than they did. (But) things were so intense, we could not comprehend what was going on anyway.' The attacks were the first known case of suicide bombings in the UK, and the worst terrorist attack on the country since the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988. In all, 52 members of the public were killed, 32 of whom were British, with others hailing from as far afield as Nigeria and Afghanistan. In addition, 784 people were injured in the blasts. Despite the onset of the so-called 'War on Terror' following the Al-Qaeda attacks on the US on Sept. 11, 2001, the UK, with its sizable, well-established Muslim communities, had experienced relative stability despite significant British involvement in the Middle East. However, security services were not relaxed about the possibility of an attack on British soil. In March 2004, Operation Crevice had uncovered a plot to commit attacks on the UK after police raided properties in four counties surrounding London, eventually leading to five men being convicted of terrorism offences. Another cell of 13 people was discovered in Luton in August that year after the arrest of alleged Al-Qaeda operative Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan in Pakistan. Coming in the wake of the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, and the subsequent toppling of Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 2003, the motivation for the 7/7 attacks was conveyed via recorded video messages left by the bombers before they set off for London from Luton. The four, all British citizens, had not been known to the authorities as threats beforehand, the then Home Secretary Charles Clarke confirmed, although it later transpired Khan had links to the Luton cell. In his address, Khan praised Al-Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden, Ayman Al-Zawahiri and Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, and blamed Western military involvement in the Middle East and elsewhere for turning him into 'a soldier.' In his video, Tanweer added that the UK government was complicit in the 'genocide of 150,000 innocent Muslims in Fallujah,' and blamed it for the 'problems in Palestine, Afghanistan and Iraq.' Arab News Editor-in-Chief Faisal J. Abbas was based in London at the time of the attacks. 'July 7 forced the UK to look into its own backyard and see what has been done in the name of tolerance and freedom of speech,' he said. 'I am referring to hate preachers such as Abu Hamza Al-Masri, who was not only inciting against the UK, but was doing so under police protection.' Abu Hamza, the radical cleric who preached at Finsbury Park Mosque in north London, notorious for replacing his hands, lost in an explosion in Afghanistan, with hooks, became the focus of attention on extremist rhetoric in the UK. He was eventually convicted in 2006 of 11 charges relating to terrorism and extremism. The judge presiding over the case said he had 'helped to create an atmosphere in which to kill has become regarded by some as not only a legitimate course but a moral and religious duty in pursuit of perceived justice' in the UK. The domestic response to the attacks was mixed. The far-right British National Party used them as an opportunity to self-promote, distributing leaflets ahead of a by-election in London just a week after, featuring an image of the bombed number 30 bus. A report by the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia said it had identified cases of arson against mosques in the UK after the attacks, and that many Muslims reported feeling nervous to go outside. Abbas, though, said the response of the authorities to the attack was positive. 'As an Arab and Muslim immigrant to the UK at the time, and a professional journalist who reported on the attacks, I cannot but commend the UK authorities for keeping calm and carrying on; the way the situation was firmly handled but without creating a scare is admirable,' he said. 'I still remember the press conference of the Metropolitan Police's chief, Sir Ian Blair, hours after the attacks, where he refused to associate Islam with terror, and as such, reassuring the majority of British Muslims who didn't endorse such horrendous violence.' Darwish, too, highlighted the clear and consistent messaging by the UK government under then Prime Minister Tony Blair. 'They were actually approaching community leaders — Christian, Muslim community leaders — in order to make sure that nothing really broke down. So that was actually quite a good move by the Home Office,' he said. Chakra noted how, even while the incident was ongoing in London, the public remained tolerant and calm. '(In) this country, there is no knee-jerk reaction. Everybody was so composed, so tolerant, so open-minded,' he said. 'The people reacted with responsibility, with tolerance, with, I think, solidarity … It was an experience I will never, never forget.' However, he warned that despite an ingrained British sense of 'fair play,' the world was heading in an ever-more polarized direction, and that the UK was 'not immune' to such political trends. The July 7 attacks, he added, had played their part in robbing the UK of its political 'innocence' that once set it apart. 'There is no doubt in my mind that … 7/7 was, in one way or another, the … British scenario of Sept. 11, but of course, on a much smaller scale,' he said. 'However, I think lots of developments took place since then. Globally, we are now seeing lots of events that have been extremely influential in our way of thinking. 'I can never underestimate the danger that Brexit brought to the political scene. I think Brexit was the polite expression of xenophobia, to put it mildly. The 'we and they' scenario in Britain has escalated a lot with Brexit. I think the consensus politics that we used to talk about is gone.' The July 7 attacks proved a precursor to more major terrorist incidents in the UK. On March 22, 2017, Khalid Masood drove into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge, killing four and injuring dozens, then fatally stabbed a police officer outside Parliament before being shot dead. On 22 May that year, a suicide bomber, Salman Abedi, detonated a homemade device in the foyer of Manchester Arena as crowds were leaving an Ariana Grande concert. The attack killed 22 people, including children, and injured over 100. Then on June 3 that same year, three attackers drove a van into pedestrians on London Bridge, killing two people, before crashing near Borough Market. Armed with large knives and wearing fake explosive vests, they stabbed people in the market area, killing six more and injuring 48. All three attackers were shot dead by police. An independent coroner's inquest into the 7/7 attacks in 2011, overseen by Lady Justice Hallett, found that the 52 victims of the bombers were unlawfully killed, but that no additional security service measures could have prevented the attacks.
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Business Standard
07-07-2025
- Business Standard
20 years since 7/7 attack: How London bombings changed the UK forever
Britain on Monday marked two decades since a series of suicide bombings tore through London's transport network, killing 52 people and injuring nearly 800 others. The coordinated attacks on July 7, 2005, carried out by four British men, brought terror to the heart of the capital and left a scar on the minds of Britons forever. As commemorations take place across the country, including a service at Hyde Park's 7/7 memorial, survivors, families, and leaders are reflecting on the profound impact of that day and the years that followed. The morning London stood still In the early hours of July 7 (2005), London's transport network was operating as usual. Commuters boarded underground trains and buses during rush hour, unaware that four suicide bombers were travelling among them with deadly intent. At approximately 08:50, three near-simultaneous explosions occurred on the London Underground: Between Aldgate and Liverpool Street (Circle Line), At Edgware Road station (Circle Line), Between King's Cross and Russell Square (Piccadilly Line). Just under an hour later, at 09:47, a fourth bomb detonated on a double-decker bus in Tavistock Square, which had been diverted due to the chaos on the underground. In the immediate aftermath, confusion reigned. Early reports suggested a 'power surge' had disrupted the network. But as emergency services swarmed central London and more information emerged, the scale and nature of the attack became heartbreakingly clear. The bombers: Young men from within All the four perpetrators were British nationals, three of whom had grown up in Leeds. Their names became familiar in the days that followed: Mohammad Sidique Khan (30) – a teaching assistant from Leeds who was identified as the group's ringleader Shehzad Tanweer (22) – also from Leeds and known for his passion for sports Germaine Lindsay (19) – a Jamaican-born convert to Islam living in Aylesbury Hasib Hussain (18) – the youngest, responsible for the bus bombing The revelation that the attackers were homegrown came as a shock to many. A video released posthumously showed Khan justifying the attacks as retaliation for British foreign policy, stating, 'Your democratically elected governments continually perpetrate atrocities against my people all over the world.' The attackers were inspired by al-Qaeda's ideology and had links to al-Qaeda affiliated groups. 'Was minutes away from that bus' 'I will never know just how close I came to being on the bus that exploded in Tavistock Square,' she wrote later. 'I was riding on a London Transport double-decker on the same route only minutes before the explosion. At the time, I thought I was safe. My miscalculation could have been a fatal mistake.' A second attempt thwarted: The 21/07 plot Just a fortnight later, on July 21, 2005, four more men attempted a copycat attack on London's transport system. Their targets mirrored the original assault — three Underground trains and a bus. Fortunately, in this instance, the devices failed to explode properly. Only the detonators went off, causing panic but no deaths. The failed attack sparked a vast police operation, culminating in the arrests of all four suspects, including one detained in Rome after fleeing abroad. All were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. Jean Charles de Menezes: A tragic error Investigation was launched in full swing and several government agencies found themselves scanning the roads of England looking for leads. Several people were mistakenly arrested, stopped and searched, and detained in connection to the bombings. As shoot at sight orders were issued for any suspicious person, on July 22, Jean Charles de Menezes, a 27-year-old Brazilian electrician, was shot dead by police at Stockwell Underground station. Officers believed he matched the description of one of the failed bombers. Surveillance teams had followed him from his home, and he was shot multiple times at close range on the train. Subsequent investigations revealed that Menezes had no connection to terrorism and had not behaved suspiciously. The Metropolitan Police faced widespread criticism. Though no individual was prosecuted, the force was later found guilty of endangering public safety. The investigation: Missed warnings and rapid response The immediate investigation into July 7 was among the most intensive ever conducted in Britain. CCTV footage from King's Cross revealed the four bombers hugging before splitting up. Their car, found at Luton station, contained further explosive materials. Although security services had come across Khan and Tanweer in previous investigations, neither was considered a priority threat at the time. The attackers had no criminal records and were unknown to police in the context of terrorism — a profile that led MI5 to label them 'clean skins'. This failure to detect radicalisation at home led to calls for a rethink in domestic intelligence strategy. July 7 aftermath: A nation responds and reflects In the months and years that followed, the UK implemented sweeping changes in its counter-terrorism strategy. New legislation expanded surveillance and detention powers, while programmes like Prevent and Channel were introduced to curb radicalisation. There was also a rise in suspicion and scrutiny of Muslim communities, with some reporting increased instances of discrimination and profiling. Community leaders were pushed to denounce extremism and foster dialogue, even as they navigated grief and anxiety. Memorial and memory In 2009, a permanent memorial was installed in Hyde Park — 52 stainless steel pillars standing as silent markers of each life lost. Every year since, survivors and families have gathered there in remembrance. Today, on the 20th anniversary, tributes were led by senior political and religious leaders. King Charles III, in a recorded message, hailed the 'spirit of unity and compassion' shown in the wake of the tragedy. UK's Prime Minister, Keir Starmer echoed this sentiment, calling July 7 a 'defining moment of collective resilience'. A legacy etched in 'steel and spirit' Twenty years on, the scars of July 7 remain. For the families of those lost, for the hundreds injured, and for a city that was forever changed, the pain endures. But so does the strength. The attacks served as a grim reminder that terrorism could emerge from within. But they also demonstrated London's ability to endure, to adapt, and to honour the memory of those it lost — not with fear, but with steadfast resolve. As the steel columns in Hyde Park (or the 7/7 Memorial) glint in the summer sun, they remind everyone not only of the lives cut short, but of the importance of vigilance, unity, and hope in the face of tragedy.
Telegraph
07-07-2025
- Telegraph
I lost half my body on 7/7 – but every day I remind myself how lucky I am
On the morning of the July 7 bombings in 2005, marketing manager Martine Wright was working her way from Harringay, north London, to her office at St Katherine Docks near the Tower of London. It was later than usual – the previous night she had been out celebrating with her work colleagues following the news that London had won its bid to host the 2012 Olympics, and she'd overslept. There was a signal failure on the Northern Line, and the 52-year-old had what she now describes as her 'sliding doors moment'. 'I thought, 'Am I going to get off, go above ground and get the bus to Tower Hill, or shall I stay on the Tube?' I decided to stay on, and so one of my last memories was running up the escalator at Moorgate, turning right at the top and seeing the Circle Line train in the platform, running towards it and thinking, 'What a result.'' As she was rushing, she didn't get on her usual carriage, but her favourite seat was free – one in the corner. She picked up a paper, filled with jubilant articles about the Olympics, and pondered buying tickets for the opening ceremony. Then the bomb went off. 'I don't remember a noise, or a big bang. What I do remember is a flash of light, and it was a light that was all-consuming for a second. I remember thinking, 'What the hell is going on?'' Shehzad Tanweer, a 22-year-old Muslim extremist from the Leeds suburb of Beeston, had detonated a bomb hidden in a rucksack, as part of a coordinated attack on London that killed 52 people and injured hundreds more. Disorientated, Martine found herself surrounded by mangled metal and debris from the blast. She was yet to realise she had lost both her legs. 'I just remember, in the beginning, trying to get up, and I thought, 'Why can't I get up?'' Next to her were two survivors: Andrew Brown, electrocuted by live wires, and Kira Mason, with a severed arm. Seven passengers in the carriage had died, along with Tanweer. 'The screams were awful. I can't really describe what they were really like, and then people started to come past. It must have been the station master. He was talking to me through this hole. 'I had no concept of time. I just have memories; this gentleman talking to me, saying, 'It's OK, it's OK'. Everyone's just shouting, 'Help! Help!' 'I remember trying to pull myself out, and then seeing this figure coming up. This was my guardian angel, Liz Kenworthy. I could see Liz, long blonde hair and blue eyes, coming towards me.' Kenworthy was an off-duty police officer, and immediately got to work tending to both Andrew and Martine, gathering anything to use as a tourniquet to stem the bleeding. 'I remember one tourniquet was a belt,' recalls Martine, 'and I remember pulling this belt and thinking I felt like [a character] out of a John Wayne Western, like I used to watch with my dad on Sunday afternoon. And all I kept saying to Liz was, 'Please tell my mum and dad I'm OK.' The irony was that I wasn't OK.' Slowly, the walking wounded were evacuated through the tunnels, leaving only the most severely injured behind. Martine had to be cut out of the twisted metal, although she has no recollection of this. Having lost 80 per cent of her blood, Martine spent over a week in a coma and it took almost two days of anguish before her parents finally found her, having spent the days ringing round the city's hospitals. 'I just remember waking up in [the] Royal London [hospital] eight days later. James, my intensive care nurse, saw that I'd woken up a bit, and had to tell me that I'd lost my legs. I looked down and, you know, I saw half my body gone.' Heavily drugged, Martine went back to sleep, but the next morning reality hit her. 'I thought I was going to die. I wrote a letter [in my head], got the nurse to get me paper, but I couldn't write. I asked to have my ashes scattered on Haad Yao Beach, Koh Phangan – my favourite place in Thailand.' Martine spent 366 days in hospital, firstly at the Royal London and then at Queen Mary's Hospital, Roehampton, in a rehabilitation centre for amputees. Out of all those who survived the bombings – passengers on two other Tube trains and a double-decker bus in Tavistock Square – Martine was the worst injured, and at first felt bitter and resentful. 'I went down to the physio, and met about five or six of the other victims. I looked around that room and I thought, 'Oh, you've got one arm missing, you've got one leg missing, you've got one foot missing. I've lost two legs [above the knee]… Why?' And then I found out that 52 people had died. I had no idea that so many people had died that day.' Martine began talking to the other survivors, who make up what is now known as the 7/7 Club. 'That is a club that you would never choose to belong to, but a club where all you've got to do is walk into a room and see that person's eyes and you've got this deep understanding of each other.' And gradually, amid the trauma of what had happened, Martine discovered a new purpose. 'I suddenly found myself holding hands with people and looking into their eyes, and I felt like I had a role to play, to say, 'It's going to be OK'. And I think now, looking back, that was really important for me in my healing process, thinking, 'I can help people, I'm not useless', reminding people that we were actually the lucky ones.' Martine campaigned for better compensation for the 7/7 victims and, in 2009, discovered wheelchair volleyball. With the help of her physiotherapist, Maggie Uden, she began her journey to compete in the 2012 Paralympics. She was awarded an MBE in 2016 for services to sport, including her work as a role model for amputee athletes, and she also mentors amputees at the Royal London. 'I diverted my anger towards the Government. I met families of those 52 people, they were offered £8,000 each. Bloody ridiculous. I remember meeting Tony Blair and Gordon Brown at the first memorial at St Paul's Cathedral. Tony Blair could not look me in the eye. I thought it's because he couldn't relate to us. But Gordon Brown and Sarah Brown were fantastic. 'I still don't understand why I wasn't really angry towards the bombers. [Mohammad Sidique Khan, 30, Hasib Hussain, 18, Germaine Lindsay, 19, and Tanweer, all died in the attack.] I couldn't get away from the fact they had left their family and left their babies, their children, their wives – they'd been influenced by someone else. [Martine herself has a son, now aged 15.] 'Not a day goes by when I don't think I'm lucky. You know, [Tanweer] was 4ft away from me. I should not be here. And I'm here not just because of me, I'm here because of the love and support I've had. 'Twenty years on, this is normal. This is my life. Maybe five, 10 years on it wasn't normal, but I'm very reflective now. I feel like I could not have done anything in my life to stop what happened, and that actually my life is more enriched, it's better, than it was before. My legs might be shorter, but that's it.' 'I knew it was bad, but I figured she had a chance': the rescuer's story Liz Kenworthy, an officer with the Met Police, was off duty on July 7 2005, heading into London for a conference. Having missed the first train from Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, so she could have a chat with her daughter, Emily, on the platform, Liz arrived at London Liverpool Street station later than planned and then headed to the Circle Line. 'I jumped on the Tube, with my rucksack on my back, my Daily Telegraph under my arm, because it was full of pictures of the excitement of the previous day, and the train pulled out, heading towards Aldgate,' she remembers. 'Very shortly afterwards, there was a sudden crunch; the train came to an abrupt halt.' The lights flickered on and off, and then there was a call on the intercom for anyone medically trained. Thinking that perhaps there had been a collision, Liz made her way through the carriages towards the front of the train. 'The next carriage was very different. There was darkness, there was newspaper blowing around. People injured and covered in dirt started coming towards me.' Reasoning that these were the walking wounded and that there were likely to be more seriously injured passengers further on, she carried on walking through the carriages. Finally, she reached the carriage where the bomb had detonated. 'The cables were coming out of the roof like spaghetti, the train had been disembowelled – the floor was ripped up, and there were bodies. I saw a human back underneath, down below my feet, and a big sheet of metal, which I had to stand on. The body down in the hole was [beyond saving], so I just had to ignore it.' Liz's police training had impressed on her that if there were more than three casualties, her job was to stand back, assess the situation and call for help. Liz sent a text to a colleague: 'Accident Aldgate, I'm OK', but the text didn't send, so Liz crawled into the carriage, finding Martine and Andrew. 'I saw a lady on the right with her feet up. I thought, 'Why is she sitting like that with her feet up on the seat?' Then I realised that it was her shoes up on the sill, not her feet. It was an incredibly confusing scene. 'I didn't compute what had happened initially. Then I realised she was badly hurt, but conscious. The man next to her had lost one of his legs, but he was conscious as well and then, to their left, there was a woman on her back in the debris trapped by her arm, and she was shouting and shouting. 'One of the rules we're taught is: the more people shout, the less help they probably need; if they've got the energy to shout, then let them get on with it. 'So I thought, 'I'll stick with the lady who's lost her feet, and I'll stick with the man, and the lady who's shouting. I'll deal with them.'' Liz worked to stem the bleeding from Andrew Brown's leg, and sent a volunteer with her warrant card to find T-shirts, belts and ties to use as tourniquets. She did her best to comfort and tend to the injured, and could see that Martine was in a critical condition. 'It was bad, but I knew that people from the First World War had their legs blown off in trenches and survived. Obviously, I couldn't tell if she had anything internal, but she was still talking and conscious. I figured she stood a chance.' Some time later, Liz was joined by Sgt Neal Kemp of the City of London Police. Sgt Kemp's arrival took the pressure off Liz, who was exhausted by this point. 'I had probably done about as much as I could. I was starting to flag. I said to Sgt Kemp: 'This is Andy, this is Martine. Remember their names. They're going to live. They're going to be alright, we're going to make sure they get out safely…'' Then approximately 45 minutes after the bombing, the fire brigade arrived. Liz made her way through the tunnel to the surface to see people being treated on the streets. Liz wrote down as much as she could remember while it was still fresh in her mind, and drew a map of the scene on the train. Later, her sergeant came with colleagues and took her statement. 'I gave them the original notes, and I said, 'I can't write anything else.' For a person who loves words, I've never, ever been able to write it down. I can talk to you about it. But I can't write it down.' Understandably, life didn't get back to 'normal' for Liz, as it didn't for so many survivors. 'Once I knew what [the blast] was, I was extremely angry – the idea that someone would do that to people they didn't know, and hurt people that were completely innocent, minding their own business, travelling on a train.' Liz saw someone in occupational health, and talking about it helped a great deal. 'I needed to talk about it and come to terms with not being able to do more, and wishing I could have stopped it. But, I did what I could in the circumstances, and I can't beat myself up over what I did or didn't do, because it's done.' For the remaining years of her service, Liz carried a first aid kit and torch in her backpack during her commute, 'in case it happened again'. She received an MBE for bravery and retired on the 11th anniversary of the attacks, in 2016. Unlike Martine, whom Liz is still in contact with, there is no forgiveness or understanding. There's a deep anger towards the terrorists, and Liz is incredibly blunt in her condemnation. 'They're beneath contempt. They're evil people. I don't care what their cause is. 'They've wasted their own lives. They've caused a lot of hurt and misery, and what have they achieved? Absolutely nothing. You want to blow yourself up. You really want to end up as a carcass in the bottom of a train? You're not a hero. You're just a dead lump of meat with me stepping on you. Me in my shoes, stepping on you. That's how I feel about that.'
