The Terrorists Next Door

The most pressing question is whether a wider network of accomplices is at large. After the July 21 attacks, investigators discovered a fifth, abandoned bomb in a field in west London as well as 16 bomb components in the trunk of the car left at Luton train station by the July 7 suicide bombers. Hussain has told Italian investigators that his July 21 gang had nothing to do with the July 7 cell and progressed to terrorism without any contact with al-Qaeda except what the members read on the Internet, according to Italian news reports. British officials are taking seriously that the terrorists were homegrown. Shane Brighton, an expert at the Royal United Services Institute in London, says "self-radicalization" has been a mounting concern to terror experts. "If you already accept that there's a historic struggle between Muslims and the West and that the only resort is violence," he says, "all you need to do is watch the news to have your mind-set reconfirmed." Those who have self-radicalized can easily resort to "Google terror"--turn to the Internet for bomb recipes, how-to videos and moral support--and thus slip beneath the radar of the security services.

For the July 21 terrorists, there was disaffection aplenty in Britain to prime them for violence. Omar, 24, the alleged bomber caught in Birmingham, came to Britain as a dependent of his elder sister when he was 11. In London, Omar moved through a series of foster homes and attended a school with a truancy rate three times the national average. By the time he turned 18, he was sufficiently troubled to be declared a "vulnerable young adult" by social services and was moved into a one-bedroom apartment on the ninth floor of a grim north London apartment building called Curtis House, which is home to a large immigrant population. Omar lived off state benefits worth at least $150 a week, which stopped a few months ago, and began to slide toward Islamic radicalism. At a grocery store a few blocks from Curtis House, the Turkish owner's wife Nursal remembers talking to Omar about a terrorist attack by al-Qaeda, saying it was terrible. She recalls his reply: "Why is it terrible? Those people [the victims] are killing Muslims." A classmate says Omar "got religion three or four years ago and grew a beard. He changed. I think he was lonely, led away and brainwashed."

A few years ago Omar found a new housemate in Said, 27, a British citizen who arrived from Eritrea when he was 14. He served time in five juvenile jails after being convicted in 1996 for being part of a gang that robbed at knifepoint. Police believe that Omar and Said used their apartment as a bomb factory for the July 21 attacks. Nicola Hannay-Young, 15, who lives on the second floor, said Omar and Said and sometimes their friends "were in and out six or seven times a day. One of them had a dark blue plastic carrier bag that he carried very tightly." Traces of explosive were reportedly found in the building's garbage chute, and explosives were removed from Omar's apartment and a nearby garage.