Police question whether London bombers were suicides

Dig this: according to the New York Times, British police think the four London bombers may have been duped into blowing themselves up. Various bits of trivial evidence hint they may not have planned to be suicide bombers: they bought round-trip tickets to London, they left a large quantity of explosives in a car, their families are baffled by their suicides. Not mentioned in the story, there is also that jaw-dropping photo of two of the fiends having a great time white-water rafting in Wales a month before the attack, a picture hard to square with the profile of young men planning to murder scores of innocent people along with themselves (though apparently not hard to square with the thought of them planning to murder scores of innocent people, period). One theory the police are considering is that “the men knew there were timers on the bombs, and were instructed to leave the explosives on the trains at a designated time, perhaps 9 a.m. ‘It is possible that they were told the bombs would blow up at 9:10 a.m. or 9:15 a.m., and they were to stay with them until 9 a.m.,’ another official said. The bombs went off at 8:50 a.m.”

It’s possible, I suppose. But there is also, of course, a powerful motive on the part of the authorities and the liberal media to find that it was not a suicide attack, as the Times itself virtually admits:

If the attacks were a suicide mission, they would be the first suicide bombings on European soil, and signal a dangerous new threat. Suicide could indicate a higher level of commitment and point to the existence within Britain of extremists willing to die for a cause.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 27, 2005 07:50 PM | Send