SCOTT BARBOUR / GETTY IMAGES ROUGH RIDE Police patrolling the Piccadilly Line, four weeks after the July 7 attacks

SPECIAL REPORT     Homeland Insecurity
	As investigators try to unravel the cells that bombed London, Blair gets tough on preachers of jihad
	By J.F.O. MCALLISTER / London

Posted Sunday, August 7, 2005; 11:34BST
Britain is digging in for a long war. After the adrenaline rush two weeks ago of the spectacular raids that nabbed four men suspected of bringing dud bombs onto London's transport system on July 21, the government is moving on two fronts. It's working in secrecy to identify everyone involved in those attacks and the ones on July 7 that killed 52, and it's reaching for public support as it announces new laws to make Britain more resistant to jihad.

Last week, two more people were taken into custody for the July 21 attacks, bringing the number of arrests in connection with that investigation to 39. Twenty-one people have already been released after initial suspicions didn't pan out. Six have been charged with a crime — for "failing to disclose information" to authorities about the whereabouts of the July 21 suspects as they fled. Three of the men detained for the later, failed attacks are being interrogated and must be charged by the end of this week or released. The fourth, Hussain Osman, also known as Hamdi Isaac, who had managed to flee to Rome, is expected to resist extradition to Britain at a hearing in the Italian capital on Aug. 17. London's transport network remains awash with police and emptied of trash bins that might conceal bombs. According to a Time/cnn poll, almost one-third of Britons (31%) said they have been put off from visiting the city.

Nevertheless, the crisis atmosphere abated — as Prime Minister Tony Blair proved by going on vacation. Al-Qaeda showed it has hunkered down for a protracted struggle, too. The group's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, surfaced on a video filled with dire warnings. "Blair's policies brought you destruction in central London and will bring you more destruction, God willing," he intoned. "You spilled blood like rivers in our countries and we exploded volcanoes in yours." Some analysts doubt that he or Osama bin Laden maintain enough operational control to have directed the London attacks, but believe he is exploiting a good p.r. opportunity to trumpet that al-Qaeda is still kicking.

British authorities had wisps of indications that a third cell might be preparing to strike, but have not established any solid links between the July 7 and July 21 suspects, or between either cell and al-Qaeda. Nevertheless, some aspects of the attacks came into clearer focus. New York City's police commissioner, Ray Kelly, told business security leaders that the July 7 bombs were made of a volatile home-brewed explosive called hmdt containing citric acid and peroxide, and were detonated by mobile-phone alarms set to 8:50 a.m. Other strands remained tangled. In Rome, Osman presented himself as a hapless innocent, claiming through his lawyer, Antonietta Sonnessa, that the backpack he carried onto the underground contained just flour, with a detonator to make a scary noise. "He said he only intended to make a demonstrative action," she claimed. "He cannot give any help to police for the simple reason that he is not associated with any terrorist organization." British officials privately scoffed. The chief magistrate prosecuting Osman, Franco Ionta, told Time that British investigators would be allowed to question him this week. Another lead British investigators are likely to pursue is Haroon Rashid Aswat, a British-born Muslim of Indian descent who grew up near one of the July 7 bombers. He is being deported to Britain from Zambia after a tussle with U.S. officials, who wanted Zambia to deliver him to them because of a sealed complaint against him in a U.S. terrorist case. British officials are not sure he is connected with the July 7 or 21 attacks.

The search for a mastermind is still on, and frustrating. The notion that the July 21 suspects came together through watching blood-curdling anti-American videos and whipped up a copycat attack in two weeks is hard for investigators to swallow. A French antiterror investigator says, "You can't learn to make a bomb on the Internet. Learn how it's done, yes. Know how to make bombs that work, work on time, and work without blowing you up unintentionally — that's another matter."

But Britain is still struggling with the big question of how it developed a homegrown jihadist enemy in the first place. Blair's government knows that jihadists would like nothing better than to start a vicious circle of distrust between Muslims and the rest of the population; incidents of "religious hate crime" (mostly low-level verbal abuse, though there has also been damage to mosques) rose in London to 269 in the three weeks after July 7, compared to 40 in the same period of 2004. Hoping to crack down on extremists without making moderate Muslims feel scapegoated, Blair announced new laws and regulations to deport and exclude foreigners who incite or abet terror. Extremist websites, bookshops, networks and organizations will be put on a list, and "active engagement with any of these will be a trigger to consider deportation," he said. Radical preachers will be kept out of the country, and justifying or glorifying terrorism will become a crime.

Blair said he expected legal challenges; within hours of his announcement, Mohammed al-Massari, a Saudi dissident who runs the Arabic website Tajdeed, which has shown videos of car bombings and beheadings in Iraq, told Time he "would challenge in court" any attempt to shut down his site. But Blair holds a lot of political cards and intends to play them. "Let no one be in any doubt," he said. "The rules of the game are changing." It may still be a very long game.

With reporting by Bruce Crumley/Paris, Helen Gibson/London and Jeff Israely/Rome

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