Disclaimer time - I know that investigating the oddities of published reports puts me in the company of some real nuts and wackos. I also know that questioning or querying the official reports as they come in tends to aggravate some people, who don't even want to hear it. So be it, on both accounts.

Secondly, I have no idea who set up these bombs and I'm not saying I do. My job is to ask questions not to promulgate answers. If you think I'm pointing the finger at group X or group Y and saying "they did it" then you aren't reading what I'm writing.

Thirdly, I am fully aware the investigation is not over and I do hope that when it is completed a lot of these questions will be answered.

Furthermore, let me add something I read in a book. From Pattern Recognition pages 293-294:

There must always be room for coincidence. When there's not, you're probably well into apophenia, each thing perceived as a part of an overarching pattern of conspiracy. And while comforting yourself with the symmetry of it all, you stood all too real chance of missing the genuine threat, which was invariably less symmetrical, less perfect.

Fair enough?

Today we'll begin again with the mysterious Haroon Rashid Aswat, who was the subject of Part 7 of this series.

He is a British citizen and was arrested in the nation of Zambia on July 20 on the Botswana border. He is in the process of being extradicted to Britain and in the newspapers he is being considered the "mastermind" of the 7/7 bombings. According to most reports, he was in Britain up until July 6 when he left the country.

Earlier reports stated that he had been arrested in Pakistan, but this is the official story for now, that he was picked up and is being held in Lusaka.

As extensively researched in Part 7 of this series, Aswat was linked to a 1999 terrorist training camp in Oregon but was never indicted or charged in the United States. This was extremely mysterious to me at the time since the various law enforcement agencies in the United States kept pointing fingers of blame at each other about how why he had never been charged, the weakest theory was that they thought he had been killed "somewhere", either Afghanistan, Sudan or Pakistan.

However as much as I tried to avoid the "tinfoil hat" conspiracy angle to this, I see that this is now being extensively promoted by no less a source than Fox News itself. A regular commentator on Fox, a former federal prosecutor named John Loftus, appeared on Fox News on July 29 and said the following:

MIKE JERRICK [FOX NEWS]: John Loftus is a terrorism expert and a former prosecutor for the Justice Department. John, good to see you again. So real quickly here, have you heard anything about this Osman Hussain who was just picked up in Rome? You know that name at all?

JOHN LOFTUS: Yeah, all these guys should be going back to an organization called Al-Muhajiroun, which means The Emigrants. It was the recruiting arm of Al-Qaeda in London; they specialized in recruiting kids whose families had emigrated to Britain but who had British passports. And they would use them for terrorist work.

JERRICK: So a couple of them now have Somali connections?

LOFTUS: Yeah, it was not unusual. Somalia, Eritrea, the first group of course were primarily Pakistani. But what they had in common was they were all emigrant groups in Britain, recruited by this Al-Muhajiroun group. They were headed by the, Captain Hook, the imam in London the Finsbury Mosque, without the arm. He was the head of that organization. Now his assistant was a guy named Aswat, Haroon Rashid Aswat.

JERRICK: Aswat, who they picked up.

LOFTUS: Right, Aswat is believed to be the mastermind of all the bombings in London.

JERRICK: On 7/7 and 7/21, this is the guy we think.

LOFTUS: This is the guy, and what's really embarrassing is that the entire British police are out chasing him, and one wing of the British government, MI6 or the British Secret Service, has been hiding him. And this has been a real source of contention between the CIA, the Justice Department, and Britain.

JERRICK: MI6 has been hiding him. Are you saying that he has been working for them?

LOFTUS: Oh I'm not saying it. This is what the Muslim sheik said in an interview in a British newspaper back in 2001.

JERRICK: So he's a double agent, or was?

LOFTUS: He's a double agent.

JERRICK: So he's working for the Brits to try to give them information about Al-Qaeda, but in reality he's still an Al-Qaeda operative.

LOFTUS: Yeah. The CIA and the Israelis all accused MI6 of letting all these terrorists live in London not because they're getting Al-Qaeda information, but for appeasement. It was one of those you leave us alone, we leave you alone kind of things.

JERRICK: Well we left him alone too long then.

LOFTUS: Absolutely. Now we knew about this guy Aswat. Back in 1999 he came to America. The Justice Department wanted to indict him in Seattle because him and his buddy were trying to set up a terrorist training school in Oregon.

JERRICK: So they indicted his buddy, right? But why didn't they indict him?

LOFTUS: Well it comes out, we've just learned that the headquarters of the US Justice Department ordered the Seattle prosecutors not to touch Aswat.

JERRICK: Hello? Now hold on, why?

LOFTUS: Well, apparently Aswat was working for British intelligence. Now Aswat's boss, the one-armed Captain Hook, he gets indicted two years later. So the guy above him and below him get indicted, but not Aswat. Now there's a split of opinion within US intelligence. Some people say that the British intelligence fibbed to us. They told us that Aswat was dead, and that's why the New York group dropped the case. That's not what most of the Justice Department thinks. They think that it was just again covering up for this very publicly affiliated guy with Al-Muhajiroun. He was a British intelligence plant. So all of a sudden he disappears. He's in South Africa. We think he's dead; we don't know he's down there. Last month the South African Secret Service come across the guy. He's alive.

JERRICK: Yeah, now the CIA says, oh he's alive. Our CIA says OK let's arrest him. But the Brits say no again?

LOTFUS: The Brits say no. Now at this point, two weeks ago, the Brits know that the CIA wants to get a hold of Haroon. So what happens? He takes off again, goes right to London. He isn't arrested when he lands, he isn't arrested when he leaves.

JERRICK: Even though he's on a watch list.

LOFTUS: He's on the watch list.The only reason he could get away with that was if he was working for British intelligence. He was a wanted man.

JERRICK: And then takes off the day before the bombings, I understand it--

LOFTUS: And goes to Pakistan.

JERRICK: And Pakistan, they jail him.

LOFTUS: The Pakistanis arrest him. They jail him. He's released within 24 hours. Back to Southern Africa, goes to Zimbabwe and is arrested in Zambia. Now the US--

JERRICK: Trying to get across the--

LOFTUS: --we're trying to get our hands on this guy.

You can find the video online and it's plainly obvious that Jerrick is absolutely flabbergasted by this information. So who is this Loftus guy?

He's a published author, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, is the subject of a SHOWTIME movie (called "Secret Wars"), a regular commentator on Fox News and as stated above, was a federal prosecutor.

From his own website:

It is possible that John Loftus may know more intelligence secrets than anyone alive. As a former Justice Department prosecutor, Loftus once held some of the highest security clearances in the world, with special access to NATO Cosmic, CIA codeword, and Top Secret Nuclear files. As a private attorney, he works without charge to help hundreds of intelligence agents obtain lawful permission to declassify and publish the hidden secrets of our times.

So Loftus is saying that Aswat is/was a double agent or worked for MI6, that he was arrested and freed in Pakistan (on their orders) and then gets picked up in Zambia on apparently a British warrant. Weird stuff.

Let's see what we can corroborate about Loftus' story:

Well it does seem to be true that British intelligence had been the ones to "confirm" Aswat's death:

THE smartly dressed British officials smiled and punched the air as news came through that the passport of Haroon Rashid Aswat had been recovered from the body of a young Muslim killed fighting for the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Days later and sitting round a table deep within Thames House, the headquarters of MI5 in London, the officers were in no doubt that Aswat’s death had eliminated a major terrorist threat to the UK.

Laid out before the group were highly classified photographs and papers from his file, revealing the activities, friends and acquaintances of a young man who was increasingly becoming a headache for Britain’s security services.

But wait a second, that's MI5, the domestic agency (sort of like the FBI) whereas Loftus is saying it was MI6 (sort of like the CIA) were protecting this guy. According to the same article, they reference his arrest in Pakistan on July 20, where details such as his carrying a million rupees and a suicide belt were released.

And the same article says the FBI had been told he was dead. So it does seem like someone planted a passport on some poor dead guy in Afghanistan and it made it all the way to MI5 and the FBI that he was dead (in early 2003), therefore they could drop all plans to indict him in the U.S. It's worth a re-mention here that Hamza, the "radical cleric" of Finsbury Park, wasn't indicted until 2004.

What else can confirm Loftus' story? Well according to this report:

Several weeks before the July 7 bombings in London, British officials were reluctant to approve a plan by U.S. authorities to seize an Indian-born British citizen who is now wanted for questioning in the attacks, law enforcement officials said Thursday.

At the time, the man, Haroon Rashid Aswat, 31, had been under surveillance in South Africa by the authorities there, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the case.

But during discussions between the three nations about how to proceed against Aswat, who was wanted on terrorism charges brought in New York City, he eluded investigators and disappeared, the officials said.

Why would "British authorities" be reluctant to have Aswat seized and questioned? They have seized and questioned a heck of a lot of other people on less serious charges and spirited them away to be interrogated and worse. In fact, Aswat's parents have hired a lawyer precisely because they're worried their son will be "rendered" to Guantanamo Bay as have British citizens in the past (in fact you can read British citizen Jamal al-Harith's story about it).

So now we've got Aswat being held or followed in both South Africa and Pakistan and both times mysteriously "slipping away" from them. If that's not weird enough, check out the FT from July 31:

Zambian officials have agreed to extradite Mr Aswat, whose telephone reportedly received calls from the July 7 bombers, but British officials said they were no longer interested in interrogating him.

I've seen dozens if not hundreds of reports showing that Aswat's cell/mobile phone made "up to 20" calls to all four of the 7/7 bombers shortly before the attacks. Why on earth would they be "no longer" interested in interrogating him? And I've seen this new "Aswat's not involved and doesn't need to be questioned" story corroborated in other mainstream newspapers.

So it seems that Loftus' story pans out. Aswat, clearly linked to the 1999 training camp, never gets indicted. He's free to roam around the world and lives in Britain, somehow "undetected" even though MI5 and the FBI think he's dead. He then makes 20 calls (or his phone was used to make the calls) to the 7/7 bombers. He skips out of Britain, goes to Pakistan, is arrested and then un-arrested. He was previously in South Africa where he is tailed but again not arrested. And then finally he's picked up in Zambia and now the British police aren't even interested in questioning him.

Weird, weird and weirder. The problem with him being a "double agent" is that his name was widely publicized in Ujaama's 2000 trial. And in case you don't think Al-Qaeda readers the newspapers, they do. Link goes to a story where Osama bin Laden learned which one of his satphones had been intercepted when Clinton sent in some missiles to Afghanistan in 1998.

Aswat also was photographed and seen many times with Hamza, the extremely well-known radical preacher in London. Aswat was never some low-level person who hid in the shadows, he has even claimed he was Osama's "driver" for goodness sake. So the new official story is that he secretly was a double agent? If that's so and he knew the 7/7 bombers (enough to have their numbers in his phone), why weren't the attacks prevented?

There are two possible theories, both of them equally frightening. The first is that he was truly a double agent yet the agency he was working for (MI6?) botched the job, the same way the FBI completely bungled the 1993 WTC bombing masterminded by Ramzi Yousef. In that case, they also had an informant (double agent) named Emad Salem, who actually built the bomb that blew up in the tower.

The second possibility is that Aswat is working for Group X, which obviously has enormous influence with both the British and American authorities. There are plenty of "tinfoil" type websites out there which are happy to put a name on Group X.

But let's get back to something else Loftus said about Al Muhajiroun, which is not a person but an organization:

On a spring evening in east London Sulayman Keeler is taking his son to a meeting organised by Al-Muhajiroun. The group says it's involved in a purely ideological battle for the creation of an Islamic state here in Britain. They assemble at a community centre rented for the night. The women don't want to be filmed and some men fail to turn up because they don't want to be identified. This is the face of extreme political Islam. Al-Muhajiroun holds these meetings three or four times a week across the country. The organisation emerged in the mid-1990s after its British-based leaders split from the equally radical international movement for a global Islamic state known as Hizb ut-Tahrir.

There's also some video to watch there from the BBC. So there's an organization in Britain of Muslims openly calling for the establishmnent of an Islamic state, extremely similar to Hizb-ut-Tahrir but both organizations always specifically denounces violence.

The British police certainly know where to find al-Muhajiroun because they have offices and headquarters, which of course were raided recently. It's leader Omar Bakri Muhammed:

It is not the first time we face something similar - the police visit us and take some items and cancel some of our events.

"But the scale of it this time, it seems to me they are really clamping down on al-Muhajiroun.

"The police always investigate us, always interrogate us, always check everything we do.

"Everything we do is within the framework of the law which is what you offer to the people living in this country - it surprise me, why now?"

So just like Hamza (Aswat's old boss), these guys are pretty radical but they're also pretty openly radical. Unlike the 7/7 and 7/21 bombers, whom nobody had the faintest idea they were involved in something "radical" before setting off bombs.

Now the above appearance on Fox News by Loftus wasn't quoted in its entirety. After speaking the above information, there was some Q&A from the audience:

LOFTUS: The US government's doing a great job. We arrested the New York branch of Al-Muhajiroun two years ago. We found the subway bombers with the plans to blow up two different subway stations in New York City. The rest of the group is under surveillance. But the US was used by Al-Muhajiroun for training of people to send to Kosovo. What ties all these cells together was, back in the late 1990s, the leaders all worked for British intelligence in Kosovo. Believe it or not, British intelligence actually hired some Al-Qaeda guys to help defend the Muslim rights in Albania and in Kosovo. That's when Al-Muhajiroun got started.

IJAZ: Which is by the way why we know so much about them right now.

LOFTUS: Yes, I'm afraid so. The CIA was funding the operation to defend the Muslims, British intelligence was doing the hiring and recruiting. Now we have a lot of detail on this because Captain Hook, the head of Al-Muhajiroun, he sidekick was Bakri Mohammed, another cleric. And back on October 16, 2001, he gave a detailed interview with al-Sharq al-Aswat, an Arabic newspaper in London, describing the relationship between British intelligence and the operations in Kosovo and Al-Muhajiroun. So that's how we get all these guys connected. It started in Kosovo, Haroon was 31 years old, he came on about 1995.

Loftus was really on fire that day wasn't he? Not only is he saying Aswat was a double agent, now he's saying that British intelligence created al-Muhajiroun. Whether it did or not is for someone else to say, but it's quite clear they were united with the Bosnian and Albanian side in the wars that broke up the Yugoslav Federation.

The "Ijaz" in the above segment is another regular Fox commentator, Mansoor Ijaz. He's certainly experienced in a lot of fields as his biography indicates.

I've covered the Yugoslav wars in other articles but I can state here for the record that many Muslims, especially from Bosnia, did espouse extremely radical views (including the first president Izetbegovic) and that the British and Americans badly wanted Serbia to relinquish control of the territories of Bosnia and Kosovo.

To be extremely charitable here, it's possible that MI6 created al-Muhajiroun as a kind of "flypaper" organization, drawing the most hot-headed and radical Muslims in so they could be tracked and surveilled. And when Loftus above talks about the "subway station" bombing attempts, he's referring to this case against Abu Mezer and "Khalil". Sounds like the name of an Arabic sitcom or something. Read the entire thing and you'll see that one bomber was given life in prison and one just got 3 years.

But the interview on July 29 wasn't quite over. One more bombshell to go:

JERRICK: OK. Here's another question for you.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hello, John. With the quid-pro-quo relationship that London obviously had with these terrorists early on, what changed that caused them to all of a sudden get away from the you leave us alone, we'll leave you alone situation?

LOFTUS: The Israelis say that the truce went on for years. Guys from Al-Muhajiroun for example would bring suicide bombers to Israel to blow up Mike's Place. There was a definite link there. And yet the trainer, Sadiki Al Kahn, was able to go back to Britain and not be touched. What the Israelis believe happened is that Usama Bin Laden got desperate, and he said burn all our bridges--let's turn on the British. Break the truce, start the bombs.

You can see we're back to Mike's Place again, which the Israelis have always said was committed by two British Pakistanis using that mysterious CX123, which the Mossad chief said was used on 7/7 (although the official unofficial story continues to be it was TATP). And of course 7/7 bomber Siddique Khan went to Israel shortly before the Mike's Place bombing, which some papers indicated he might have had a role in that.

From a report from May 21, 2003 referencing Asif Hanif, one of the bombers of Mike's Place (April 29, 2003):

What was surprising, and perhaps unforgivable, was that their “religious” and ideological descent into attempted mass murder could not have been adequately monitored by either the British or Israeli security services and law enforcement agencies. Information provided by the police at the initial court hearing at Bow Street Magistrates Court on 9 May clearly indicated that Sharif’s family knew what he was up to, if not actually complicit in his terrorism. The family are now remanded to the Central Criminal Court, charged with failing to disclose information that could have prevented a terrorist attack, under section 38 of the amended Terrorism Act 2000. Sharif’s sister, Parveen Sharif, also faces the more serious charge of aiding, abetting, counselling or procuring acts of terrorism overseas under section 62 of the Act which carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment on conviction.

People who are recruited by AM [Al Muhajiroun] are taught by the organisation that Israel, the Jews and the West are evil and that it is their Muslim duty to fight them. This is not to state that AM is itself a terrorist organisation. It is not, at least in Britain, but it does serve as an important radicalising agent in the process of turning young British Muslims against Britain and into militant Islamists, and serves as a portal through which some of them have been encouraged to pass on their way to becoming terrorists.

AM activist Hassan Butt, who returned to Britain during 2002 from Lahore, stated in an interview with al-Sharq al-Awsat, that he estimated the number of suicide bombers waiting to carry out operations were more than fifty. He added that most of them are currently in Britain, although not necessarily active members of AM. He did state, however, that most of them had received religious lessons in Britain and that they had been taught that jihad was a priority.

It this is the case then both Britain and Israel can expect more suicide bombings, unless the security services and law enforcement agencies make a determined attempt to discover their identities.

That entire article has some pretty scary stuff.

So let's review. Loftus is saying that the British knew all about al Muhajiroun because it served some purpose to do so. And then for some reason, the group turned against Britain, setting off at least one wave of attacks (the 7/7 bombings). And in 1995, ten years ago, our man Aswat was recruited by this organization.

If that wasn't enough, our mysterious man Mohammed Junaid Babar, the subject of Part 8 of this series, has now been linked to Al Muhajiroun:

A U.S.-based leader of Al-Muhajiroun who operates openly in Queens told WND on condition of anonymity: "I've known Junaid [Babar] for a long time. I met him about seven years ago in a local Mosque in Queens before we both became involved with Muhajiroun."

The leader would not comment on Babar's involvement with his group, except to say Babar was involved in "organizational operations" in Queens and later in Pakistan, where he traveled after leaving a $70,000-a-year computer job because he wanted to join the jihad in Afghanistan.

So putting all the conspiracy dots together, an organization (AM) created and/or handled by the British have links to 1) the wacko fake Al-Qaeda mystery man "Junaid" and 2) the great "Houdini", able to slip law enforcement at every turn, our man Aswat. So who is missing?

Why of course it's our favorite 7/7 bomber, Siddique Khan. He's already been tied to no less than five attacks and sure enough, now there's information linking him to Muhajiroun as well (including the finger from Junaid in Part 8). From the Guardian:

The al-Muhajiroun site has also been scrutinised. Its leader, Omar Muhammad Bakri, has spoken of his ambition to see the "black flag of Islam" flying over Downing Street. It is understood that at least one of the suspects killed after the London blasts had links with members of al-Muhajiroun in Bedfordshire.

For record, Omar Bakri Muhammed is the official founder of al-Muhajiroun, which began in 1996.

So how do I know Khan was the 7/7 the Guardian is referring to? Well the connection is slightly tenuous but Khan and the others were tied to a bookstore in Leeds called Beeston's Iqra, which was raided by police shortly after 7/7 and is thought to be the place where they plotted the attacks. Check out this paragraph:

Beeston's Iqra "learning centre" - which has sold hundreds of such stock full of images of dying children and blast victims in Palestine, Afghanistan and India.

And the entire operation was allegedly funded by Government grants and lotto money - right down to the computers on which the propaganda films were produced.

So we've got reports that the 7/7 bombers were meeting in a store in which everything was funded by the government, in this case the British government.

So our three oddball characters are Junaid, Aswat and Khan. I did a little more researching and I found some more information about our man Khan. From a July 15 article from the Times of London:

Khan moved to a council house in Lees Holm, Thornhill, Dewsbury, six months ago and became a liaison officer in another local school. His wife, Hasini Patel, is said to have held anti-Taleban, pro-women views at odds with her husband’s version of Islam. She also worked in education as a “neighbourhood enrichment officer”. They had a baby daughter in May last year. But the pressure on their marriage was too strong and the couple were said to have separated.

They previously lived in Dewsbury, in a bungalow with his mother-in-law, Farida Patel, and members of the extended family. That home was raided by 50 police officers on Tuesday morning. As a dinner lady and sports superviser, Mrs Patel became well known and popular in Dewsbury before her retirement. She also worked as a bi-lingual teacher.

The Patels were known opponents of Muslim extremism and supporters of women’s rights. They have been devastated to learn of Khan’s role.

According to a local blogger, it does seem like Farida Patel is well known. It does seem rather odd for a man fanatical enough to become a suicide bomber to marry a woman who has strong "pro-women" views, strong enough that her mother is well-known in the community for it.

But wait, it gets even weirder. In the Mirror article above about the government funded Islamic store:

The men who ran Iqra - Mohammad Tafazal, army-trained Martin Abdullah McDaid and Naveed Fiaz - allegedly funded the store through grants to the Hamara Youth Centre, which received £589,000 in taxpayers' money made up of a £200,000 capital grant, a £200,000 neighbourhood renewal grant and a £189,000 EU building grant.

Bomber Siddique Khan was a regular companion of Fiaz for several years and the pair even visited our insider's home.

Naveed Fiaz was arrested on July 19 by the police and was later released without charge. This was evidentially partially because of the bookstore/youth center, but also because the police were trying to find his brother Ejaz "Jacksy" Fiaz, who as far as I can tell has not been found.

Why were the police looking for Ejaz Fiaz? Well believe it or not, he was originally thought to have been the 7/7 bomber who blew up the train near King's Cross. This is confirmed here. That bombing was later determined to have been done by Jermaine/Germaine Lindsay.

Why on earth would the police think it had been Ejaz who was killed in the King's Cross bombing? Furthermore, according to this report, Ejaz "is believed to have traveled separately to Luton where he met the three other bombers". Extremely weird, because that's exactly what Germaine did. Also weird because Ejaz lived in the same town as the other three bombers.

According to here, Fiaz "shaved off his beard" and "dyed his hair blonde" shortly before the blasts. I should mention here that many, many mainstream reports (including Le Monde) reported that Ejaz was the fourth bomber for up to a week after the attacks. Yet I would lay a wager few of you have ever heard his name before in connection with this case.

Ejaz is also listed as a "schizophrenic" by a few sources, whatever that means. I have no idea what caused Ejaz' name to get connected with the King's Cross bombing but there had to be some kind of evidence that made them initially think he was the bomber.

Not to mention that Ejaz probably looks nothing like Germaine Lindsay, who is of Jamaican extraction, especially if Ejaz had blonde hair and no beard. Would the police really confuse the dead body of a blonde Pakistani with a dark haired Jamaican? I'm thinking that maybe the "mixed up" bombers, who were already carrying bits of identification of one another, might have had some of Ejaz' as well.

Considering that Aswat was pronounced dead after his identification was found in Afghanistan, it may entirely be possible that one of the four "identified" 7/7 bombers is not whom the police have been saying it is. For whatever reason, either a mistake or something more ominous.

And if Ejaz has not been found, where is he? Or has he been one of the numerous unnamed men arrested in the latest sweeps?

As always, the investigation continues...

Peace