Fergie's Tech Blog

UK: IT Expert Worked With July 7 Bombers & Warned Police

Ed Vulliamy writes in The Guardian Unlimited:

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.

posted by Fergie @ 6/24/2006 10:58:00 AM