The Khyam-led terror cell conducted successful early experiments with a small explosive device composed of 1.5 kg of ammonium nitrate fertilizer. This experiment convinced the group that a much larger device could be used (Summers and Casciani, 2007). The cell then purchased 600 kg of ammonium nitrate (Summers and Casciani, 2007). Fertilizer has long been a constituent part of homemade explosives used by paramilitary militant groups around the world with devastating results. More important, ammonium nitrate–based fertilizer bombs had been used by the Irish Republican Army in the UK; as an essential component part of the device, it was openly available in large quantities. The terrorist conspirators stored the industrial-sized bag of agricultural fertilizer at a self-storage unit in Hanwell, West London (Sampson and Staniforth, 2012). Unbeknownst to the plotters, diligent staff at the depot had become suspicious and alerted the police. A major covert terrorist investigation was launched under the code name Operation CREVICE.

Investigations soon revealed that a larger terrorist cell network existed beyond the core group from Crawley. New plotters had been identified, including Anthony Garcia, age 27, from Ilford, Essex, Nabeel Hussain, aged 20, from Horley, Surrey, and Salahuddin Amin, aged 30, from Luton, Bedfordshire. In addition, on the other side of the Atlantic, Mohammed Junaid Babar, a 31-year-old Pakistani-born US citizen, was identified as part of the CREVICE cell conspirators (Cowan, 2006). With a melancholy irony that is all too familiar to terrorist investigators, it would later be revealed that Babar had flown to Afghanistan to fight against the Americans several days after 9/11, even though his mother had been caught up in the 9/11 World Trade Center attack (Cowan, 2006). She had escaped from the first of the Twin Towers where she worked, when it was hit by Al Qaeda suicide bombers. Operation CREVICE revealed that Babar had traveled first to London, where he stayed for three or four days before traveling to Pakistan, where he met members of the Crawley-based terrorist cell. Another terrorist plotter, Canadian Mohammed Momin Khawaja, aged 29, from Ottawa, was also identified. Khawaja was assisting the terrorist plot by designing a remote-control detonator for the fertilizer-based device (News, 2008). The discovery of Khawaja and Babar added a new trans-Atlantic dimension for the operatives investigating Operation CREVICE. New information was discovered from the intrusive surveillance of Jawad Akbar’s home in Uxbridge, West London, on February 22, 2004 (Laville, 2006). During a conversation with cell leader Khyam, Babar appeared to suspect that they were under surveillance, saying, “Bruv, you do not think this place is bugged, do you?” “No, I do not think this place is bugged, bruv,” replied Khyam (Laville, 2006). During the recording Akbar suggested that the Ministry of Sound nightclub in London would be a soft target, saying, “What about easy stuff where you do not need no experience and nothing, and you could get a job, yeah, like for example the biggest nightclub in central London where no one can even turn round and say ‘Oh they were innocent,’ those slags dancing around?” (Laville, 2006). Akbar later suggested that the UK nightclubs and bars were “really, really big,” asking his fellow conspirators, “Trust me, then you will get the public talking yeah, yeah … if you went for the social structure where every Tom, Dick, and Harry goes on a Saturday night, yeah, that would be crazy, crazy thing, man” (Laville, 2006). Khyam stated, “The explosion in the clubs, yeah, that’s fine, bro, that’s not a problem. The training for that is available … to get them into the Ministry of Sound really isn’t difficult” (Laville, 2006). During the recorded conversation the men also discussed the use of terror in the jihad. Akbar stated, “I still agree with you on the point that terror is the best way and even the Qur’an says it, isn’t it?” (Laville, 2006).

During late March 2004, the Security Service and police were forced to bring Operation CREVICE into its final phase. Information had been gained by staff at the storage facility, who reported that Khyam had mentioned he would not require storage after the end of March. This piece of information led authorities to the natural conclusion that the ammonium nitrate was to be moved either to another location for longer-term storage or as part of the final construction of the bomb (Summers and Casciani, 2007). In either case, the risks presented to the public and the ongoing covert investigation outweighed whatever gains could be made through further extending the operation. On March 29, the members of the terrorist cell were arrested. A further terrorist plotter, Khawaja was arrested in Ottawa, Canada, and Amin was later detained in Pakistan.

Despite the operational challenges and complexities of a yearlong trial, Omar Khyam was found guilty of conspiring to cause explosions likely to endanger life between January 1, 2003 and March 31, 2004. Also convicted were Waheed Mahmood, Jawad Akbar, Salahuddin Amin, and Anthony Garcia. In passing sentence, the judge, Sir Michael Astill, told the five convicted men, “You have betrayed this country that has given you every opportunity. All of you may never be released. It’s not a foregone conclusion” (Summers and Casciani, 2007). Two other men, Nabeel Hussain and Shujah Mahmood, were found not guilty. The jury deliberated for 27 days, a record in British criminal history. Outside the Old Bailey, the solicitor for Nabeel Hussain read a statement on his client’s behalf, which said, “I have always maintained my innocence of the allegations against me. I have never been an extremist or believed in extremism. I am so glad this ordeal is over” (Summers and Casciani, 2007). In October 2008, in a packed Ottawa courtroom in Canada, Mohammed Momin Khawaja was found guilty on five charges of financing and facilitating terrorism related to building a remote-control device to trigger the CREVICE bombers’ fertilizer explosive. The terrorism charges against Khawaja were the first laid under Canada’s Anti-Terrorism Act introduced in the wake of 9/11. At the time of his arrest for his part of the CREVICE plot, Khawaja was a software developer for Canada’s Foreign Affairs Department. He pleaded not guilty but Ontario Supreme Court Justice Douglas Rutherford concluded that proof that he was working actively with the Crawley-based group could be found in the evidence, which included intercepted e-mails, a trip for training in Pakistan, and money transfers. Justice Rutherford wrote in his judgment that “Momin Khawaja was aware of the group’s purposes and whether he considered them terrorism or not, he assisted the group in many ways in the pursuit of its terrorist objective. It matters not whether any terrorist activity was actually carried out” (News, 2008).

Once the UK’s intelligence machinery of government had positively identified the domestic terrorist threat in 2003, it quickly responded to it. Operation CREVICE in particular had forestalled an attack that was intended to cause mass casualties (News, 2008). For the first time in the history of the Security Service, the Director General was invited to a meeting of the full cabinet in April 2004 to be personally congratulated by Prime Minister Tony Blair (News, 2008). Much work needed to be done to better understand the potency and potential longevity of the Islamist terrorist threat in the UK, but investigations of several Islamist groups in May 2005 had concluded that none were actively planning an attack (Andrew, 2009). The Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC), established in 2003 to assess the threat from international terrorism, had reported that “We judge at present there is no group with both the current intent and the capability to attack the UK” (Intelligence and Security Committee, 2006). In addition, a JTAC report on the terrorist threat to UK rail and underground networks, which was issued to the transport sector in May 2005, summarized the threat on its front page as follows: “Rail and underground networks have been attractive targets to terrorists worldwide; Madrid attacks offer inspiration for further attacks against rail networks; attacks on UK rail networks feature highly in terrorists’ menu of options; but there is no suggestion of a current threat to UK rail or underground” (Intelligence and Security Committee, 2006). Given the information available at the time, JTAC decided to reduce the UK threat level from Severe General to Substantial, although the accompanying report that outlined the reasons for the reduction in the threat level suggested that Substantial continued to “represent a high level of threat” and that it was possible “that there was current UK attack planning of which it was unaware” (Intelligence and Security Committee, 2006). The JTAC report also explicitly warned that an attack “might well be mounted” without warning (Intelligence and Security Committee, 2006). Despite the cautionary assessment from JTAC about unknown attacks, it appeared that the combined efforts of the UK security forces, at home and overseas, had managed to curb the vaulting ambitions of British citizens inspired by the ideology of Al Qaeda.

On the morning of July 7, 2005, four young men, described by others as looking as if they were going on a camping holiday, boarded a train form Luton to London (Sampson and Staniforth, 2012). This tight-knit group was in fact British Al Qaeda-inspired suicide bombers, making their final preparations to deliver a deadly attack that had been secretly planned beneath the radar of the sprawling UK counterterrorism intelligence machinery. The train from Luton arrived at London King’s Cross station at 8:23 AM, slightly late owing to a delay ahead of them on the rail network. At 8:36 AM, the four young men, Mohammed Siddique Khan (aged 30), Shehzad Tanweer (aged 22), Jermaine Lindsay (aged 19), and Hasib Hussain (aged 18) departed the train and were captured on closed-circuit television cameras on the concourse close to the Thameslink platform, heading in the direction of the London Underground system (Staniforth, 2009). A few moments later, at around 8:30 AM, they were seen hugging each other. They appeared happy, even euphoric (Sampson and Staniforth, 2012). They then split up, each carrying an estimated 2–5 kg of homemade explosives in their rucksacks (House of Commons, 2005). The time had come to break the fraternal bond of their terrorist cell and execute their individual contributions to a deadly coordinated attack.

The Security Service mounted their response to the 7/7 bombings under Operation STEPFORD, which soon discovered that it had previously encountered two of the suicide bombers, Mohammed Siddique Khan and Shezhad Tawneer, on the periphery of its investigation into Operation CREVICE (Sampson and Staniforth, 2012). MI5 also discovered that it had on record a telephone number that, it was able to identify after (but not before) the attacks as that of a third suicide bomber, Lindsay (Andrew, 2009). There were no Security Service traces for Hussain. According to MI5, the first evidence of Khan’s involvement was discovered on Saturday July 9, when credit cards in his name were found at the sites of the two attacks (Andrew, 2009). Subsequent investigations by MI5 revealed that Khan and Tanweer had visited Pakistan in 2003 and spent several months there with Tanweer in the winter of 2004–5, probably in contact with Al Qaeda, planning and training for the 7/7 attacks (Andrew, 2009).

In the capacity of Assistant Deputy Coroner for Inner West London, from October 11, 2010 to March 3, 2011, Right Honorable Lady Justice Hallet heard the evidence in the inquest touching the deaths of the 52 members of the public who were killed as a result of four suicide bombs. In the coroner’s report published on May 6, 2011, Hallet LJ stated that “I sat without a jury and have given verdicts of unlawful killing, with the medical cause of deaths recorded as ‘injuries caused by an explosion’ in respect of each deceased” (HM Government, 2012). On March 11, 2011, Hallet LJ announced in public that her report would be submitted under Rule 43 of the Coroner’s Act 1984. She was satisfied that the evidence she had heard gave rise to a concern that circumstances creating a risk of other deaths would occur or continue to exist in the future, and she was of the opinion that action should be taken to prevent its re-occurrence or continuation. In the light of her conclusion, Hallet LJ made nine recommendations to the authorities that had the power to take action. The nine recommendations provided lessons to be learned from the events of that morning in July. No crisis should be wasted in terms of organizational learning and development to improve responses to terrorist events of such magnitude. It was not until the close of the 7/7 inquest that a full and accurate picture emerged, which served to highlight the full scale of the challenges that emergency first responders and the states national security apparatus confronted in what is now recognized as a new era of public accountability and professional responsibility. The coroner found that none of the victims died because of the delays in the emergency response, but improvements in communication were needed between transport executives and the emergency services during a crisis (Dodd, 2011).

At the time of the catastrophic terrorist attack in the US on September 11, 2001, the UK government, like the US and many other countries in the developed world, had no sophisticated or coherent cross-departmental strategy to counter international terrorism. In short, the UK had no plan to institute of any rigor that would have been able to effectively respond to a major Al Qaeda indiscriminate attack. Of course, the UK security apparatus had memories of the long counterterrorist campaign in Northern Ireland to draw upon and the foundations that had been laid down in terms of a corpus of emergency terrorism legislation on the statute book. Throughout the history of counterterrorism practice in the UK, collaboration between government departments had been key to the success of many operations, and the intelligence community had learned the value of close cooperation with the police service. Nevertheless, the characteristics of violent jihadist terrorism, with its vaulting ambitions, strident ideology, and disregard for civilian casualties—indeed for all human life, with adherents prepared to give their lives in their attacks— represented new challenges for Parliament and public, government and law enforcement alike.