British judge raps MI5 over deadly London “7/7” bombings

Neither British intelligence nor emergency services were at fault in the terrorist attacks on London's public transport system on July 7, 2005 that killed 52 people, an inquest has found.

And while MI5, the British spy service, was rapped for its system of assessing terrorist suspects and its record-keeping after after so-called 7/7 attacks — in which suicide bombers detonated on three subway trains and a bus — intelligence lapses did not contribute to casualties on the day, the coroner reportedly ruled.

The five-month inquiry into terrorist bombings that also wounded more than 700 commuters on London’s transit system delivered a verdict of "unlawful killing," which disappointed some victims' families, according to the Associated Press. They had hoped Judge Heather Hallett would criticize emergency agencies and MI5, which had two of the bombers on its radar but failed to pursue them.

Specifically, MI5 was been criticized by Hallett for providing a key U.S. informant — Mohammed Junaid Babar, who might have been able to identify the one of the bombers, Shehzad Tanweer, before the attack — with a poor quality photograph of Tanweer when it possessed a clearer image, the Guardian reports.

She also questioned MI5's record-keeping and pointed to the weakness of the intelligence and security committee of handpicked MPs and peers and the inaccurate information provided to it by MI5.

However, she said: “I am not aware of our having left any reasonable stone unturned.”

The inquest at London’s High Court, which called 309 witnesses, including MI5 officers, examined the attacks — considered  the worst in Britain since the 1988 Pan Am plane bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland — in minute and often moving detail, the New York Times reports.

Hallett's 65-page report included suggestions that MI5 revise procedures for intelligence sharing and assessing threats, and measures to improve first aid and emergency response in case of a similar incident.

She concluded that "on the balance of probabilities," each of the victims would have died “whatever time the emergency services reached and rescued them,” the Times wrote.

MI5 admitted at the inquests that in hindsight "more could have been done," according to the Guardian. 

The inquests heard that MI5 had two clear photographs of two bombers identified as Shehzad Tanweer and Mohammad Sidique Khan after the attacks. Yet early in 2004, it passed only a poorly cropped image of Tanweer, rendering him unrecognizable, to the U.S. informant Mohammed Junaid Babar, who might have been able to identify the future bomber.

Hallett described badly cropped images of the bombers as "dreadful."

"I think one of my children could have done a better job of cropping out that photograph," Hugo Keith QC, the inquests' counsel, said. MI5 said better quality photographs were sent to Babar later on.