I am increasingly puzzled as to why police haven’t released CCTV footage of the driver of the vehicle fleeing the scene. The whole Piccadilly area is swamped by CCTV coverage. Normally, you would expect this released, so the public can help with the manhunt. That happened with the 21/7 incidents. It did not happen with Jean Charles De Menezes, of course, because the CCTV footage disproved the police story that De Menezes vaulted the barriers and sprinted through the station.
It does now appear that these were indeed not suicide bombs, and were not professionally made.
Interest point Craig. I wonder if there is an element of opportunism here, with the authorities using these bombs to reemphasise the terror threat.
"I wonder if there is an element of opportunism here, with the authorities using these bombs to reemphasise the terror threat"
Without a doubt, some elements are doing so. "The authorities" are rarely a wholly unitary force on such isues.
The interesting point is that the fact these weapons did not go off makes it much more plausible that they might be "false flag" operations. It takes a lot more ruthlessness and guts to slaughter your own people in a false flag operation than it does to plant something that will not cause any casualties.
One might argue that an organisation planting a false flag bomb would be able to create something a lot more convincing – get hold of some proper explosives, for instance, make it look like something based upon Iraqi Resistance experience. Well, maybe, but that depends upon the resources and connections of the group concerned. Also, the advantages of a "home made" appearance are, first, that it ties in with some of the recent press descriptions of other supposed attempted attacks by western muslims inspired by sympathy with the wider resistance activities against US and UK foreign policies, and second, that it makes it much less possible that the thing could actually do much damage if it were to detonate accidentally.
Of course, it's possible this is just what we are evidently supposed to believe it is, but it's all pretty ripe.
"Meanwhile, I am increasingly puzzled as to why police haven't released CCTV footage of the driver of the vehicle fleeing the scene. The whole Piccadilly area is swamped by CCTV coverage. Normally, you would expect this released, so the public can help with the manhunt. That happened with the 21/7 incidents. It did not happen with Jean Charles De Menezes, of course, because the CCTV footage disproved the police story that De Menezes vaulted the barriers and sprinted through the station."
It didn't happen with the 7/7 bombings either. What lies would have been exposed there, one could wonder.
Quite a few posters on ARRSE seem to be having doubts as well:
http://www.arrse.co.uk/cpgn2/Forums/viewtopic/t=7…
(Try going into thread from Page 9 onwards).
In the US it is being reported that the CCTV has given a pin-clear image of the car driver, who is known to the police for being involved in other Islamist bomb plots. If the police do indeed know the identity of their suspect, they may think that keeping this information under wraps for now will make it easier to track him down.
There was also an inexplicable delay in releasing CCTV images from September 11th, both from the airline check-in desks and from the Pentagon. I've never seen a satisfactory explanation of this.
The Squid,
I heard a similar explanation given on the BBC. I do not follow this at all – how does keeping the CCTV footage under wraps help the police track him down? Because the suspect will have a false confidence that the Police don't know what he looks like? That is simply nonsense – the suspect would have to have been living on the moon for the last three years not to know that he will have been covered on CCTV all through Central London. Plainly the chances of catching him would be increased if we all knew who we are looking for.