Image of London bombers released 

Published: 4:22PM Sunday July 17, 2005

Source: AAP

Britain woke up on Sunday to a chilling image of the four London bomb suspects, taken as they headed to the scene of the attacks, after Prime Minister Tony Blair branded Islamic extremism an "evil ideology".
  
Plastered over Sunday newspapers' front pages, a security camera image released by Scotland Yard showed the four men, toting large backpacks, about to head from Luton station, north of London, to King's Cross station, where they were filmed just before the bombings.
  
Scotland Yard made a fresh appeal to witnesses for any information that could help unravel the events leading up to the bombings.
  
Speaking at a Labour Party conference in the British capital on Saturday, in his most forceful speech since the July 7 attacks, Blair said: "What we are confronting here is an evil ideology.
  
"It is not a clash of civilisations - all civilised people, Muslim or other, feel revulsion at it.
  
"But it is a global struggle, and it is a battle of ideas, hearts and minds, both within Islam and outside it," he said.
  
With the death toll from the attacks now standing at 55, with some 700 others injured, police confirmed for the first time the identity of the last two bomb suspects: Mohammed Sidique Khan, 30, and Germaine Lindsay, 19.
  
Police believe Khan set off the explosion at Edgware Road, while Lindsay is thought to have caused the explosion between King's Cross and Russell Square Underground stations - the most deadly of the four rush-hour attacks.
  
Both died in the bombings, along with the two other named suspects, Hasib Hussain, 18, and Shahzad Tanweer, 22.
  
Khan, Hussain and Tanweer were Britons with family roots in Pakistan, from the Leeds area in West Yorkshire, northern England, while Lindsay, a Jamaican immigrant to Britain, came from Aylesbury, north-west of London.
  
Lindsay's wife, Samantha Lewthwaite, issued a statement saying she was "horrified", describing Lindsay as "a good and loving husband and a brilliant father, who showed absolutely no sign of doing this atrocious crime".
  
Khan's grief-stricken family alleged he had been "brainwashed" into terrorism, expressing their "deepest and heartfelt sympathy" for the victims.
  
However, in a potentially embarrassing revelation for the government, The Sunday Telegraph reported that Britain's domestic intelligence agency MI5 had opened a file on Khan last year, but closed it after ruling he posed no threat.
  
Khan's name cropped up during an investigation into an alleged bomb plot on a London target in 2004, but security services decided not to put him under watch, The Times reported, quoting an unnamed senior government official.
  
Britain's Home Office had no immediate comment on the claims.
  
Britain is linking the London bombings to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, which notoriously carried out the September 11 attacks in the United States in 2001 as well as the Madrid commuter train bombings in March 2004.
  
Blair strongly rejected claims that the London bombings were a response to his decision to take Britain into the Iraq war.
  
But in a significant break with Labour party ranks over the bombings, former British cabinet minister Clare Short said in an interview she "had no doubt" the London bombings were linked to the Iraq war.
  
The fast-moving investigation has shifted to Cairo in recent days, where British officials were expected to inquire into an Egyptian arrested on Thursday on suspicion of involvement in the bombings.
  
But Egypt's Interior Minister Habib al-Adly has dismissed reports linking Magdy Mahmud Mustafa Nashar, 33, a chemistry doctorate student at Leeds University, to the attacks as "unfounded and only hasty deductions".
  
In Pakistan, meanwhile, security officials said two of the suspected bombers - Khan and Tanweer - travelled together to Pakistan last November, returning to Britain in February this year.
  
Hussain, the officials said, travelled separately to Pakistan at an unknown time last year.
  
One of the officials said they were trying to establish the men's movements while in Pakistan, notably whether they made contact with a group led by alleged al-Qaeda number three, Abu Faraj al-Libbi, seized in Pakistan in May.
  
British police also said they were extending the detention of a suspect arrested last week in West Yorkshire under the Terrorism Act 2000, to Tuesday.
  
Meanwhile, as police said searches were continuing at eight addresses in West Yorkshire and Aylesbury, the wreckage of the bus blown up in Tavistock Square - killing Melbourne man Sam Ly and 13 others - was hauled away for examination.


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Provocative, unflinching, Thursday 9:30pm
Back Benches - giving politics back to the people
The way New Zealand wakes up weekdays, 6:30am
No one gets you closer, weeknights 7pm
Looking out for the little guy, Wednesday 7:30pm
Meet the people that bring you the news
TV ONE weekdays, 6am
The home of NZ politics - Sunday, 9am TV ONE
Where there's a story, we'll find it, Sunday 7:30pm
Te Karere, Maori News - 4pm weekdays, TV ONE
News on digital channel TVNZ 7

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