Police step up hunt for foreign links of July 7 bombings

Scotland Yard is to re-assign scores of officers back into an "intelligence-led" investigation into the July 7 London bombings to trace the overseas terrorist group believed to have supported the suicide attackers.

For the past three weeks, the Metropolitan Police has concentrated on tracing and charging those suspected of being responsible for the failed attacks on three Tube trains and a bus on July 21.

Now, however, officers have been ordered to resume their investigations into the associates in Britain and abroad of the four men who killed themselves and 52 other people and injured more than 700 a fortnight earlier.

Scotland Yard and security officials have now confirmed the disclosure made by The Sunday Telegraph two weeks ago that senior officers see no direct link between the July 7 and July 21 attackers. However, they think it "improbable" that any terrorist cell was acting alone without financial, technical and other support, almost certainly from overseas.

As revealed in earlier reports, there have been a number of links between groups in Saudi Arabia and suspected terrorists in Britain, and these remain at the forefront of the investigation.

One police official said: "Our work on 7/7 never stopped, but we'll now have greater resources available to investigate the attacks. We hope to be in a position fairly soon to inform the public definitively about exactly what happened on 7/7."

Another Scotland Yard official said: "It's unlikely that the four July 7 bombers acted in complete isolation. Previous evidence from similar attacks mitigates against that. But we don't want to go public with our findings until we've come to an informed and reasoned conclusion."

Security sources say they do not believe there was an outside "mastermind" either operating within Britain or who came to Britain to supervise the July 7 bombings.

Instead, it is now suspected that one or more of the British-born bombers attended a foreign terrorist training camp.

"It is possible that all four attended training camps abroad, but it is also possible that one attended a training camp and then, in turn, trained the others," said one security source.

"It is interesting in itself that there are no apparent links between the two [July 7 and 21] groups, given the fact that the targets for the bombings were so similar and the fact that any bombing would have needed a deal of preparation weeks, if not, months.

"We have now made significant progress in our investigations into the July 7 attacks."