A TIME OF TORMENT: Britons were horrified when police revealed three of the bombers were from Leeds
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But few authorities believe that the bombers acted alone. Investigators have focused on the explosives. Contrary to initial reports that said military-style high explosive were used, the authorities concluded that the bombs were made of tatp, a material popular with al-Qaeda because it can be cooked in a bathtub out of common chemicals. The bombs weighed only 2.7 kg each, according to a classified briefing for U.S. Senators last week.
British investigators have begun interrogating el-Nashar, who studied at North Carolina State University in 2000 and was awarded his Ph.D. in pharmaceutical enzymology by Leeds University in May. Someone with his training "could put this together blindfolded," says Magnus Ranstorp, director of the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at St. Andrews University in Scotland. But Hany el-Nazer, president of the government-funded research institute in Cairo where el-Nashar worked, told Time that el-Nashar's research was in biochemistry enzymology and pharmaceuticals and not related to building bombs or explosives.
The bombers' trail may also lead to Pakistan. A Pakistani official says British investigators want to reinterrogate Naeem Noor Khan, 25, a Pakistani arrested in Karachi last year who admitted being a top al-Qaeda communications man. His confession and computer archives led to charges of conspiracy to commit murder and other terrorism offenses being lodged against eight men in Britain last August. Khan's former boss, Abu Faraj al-Libbi, a Libyan in U.S. custody who may be bin Laden's No. 3 and is believed to have directed al-Qaeda's cells in London, told his interrogators about a plot to attack London's transport system in May that was later aborted, according to Pakistani investigators. British officials are trying to gain access to Zeeshan Siddique, a British national arrested with a false passport in May 2005 in the frontier town of Peshawar; he eventually confessed he was part of a plot to bomb pubs, restaurants and rail stations in Britain. Siddique wrote a cryptic note saying one of his comrades told him that an operation code-named the "Wagon" had been postponed — which may have referred to the bombing that eventually took place on July 7. For all the talk of British flintiness in the face of tragedy, the realization that the attack was carried out by homegrown militants cast an added pall over London as the city's residents poured onto the streets to remember the dead in silence. Ian Blair, London's police chief, says he hopes the tragedy of July 7 has jolted the "99.99% of the Muslim community who don't want any of this" into greater vigilance. "Bombers need supporters. It's the community that defeats terror, not the police," he said.
As Britain's Muslims coped with the shock of finding killers in their midst, shame and disgust were mixed, inevitably, with fury. "You whites, you're all thieves! You're all the same!" a Muslim acquaintance of the suspects yelled at a Time reporter in Leeds. "You and George thieving Bush, you're all the same. Now you can victimize us even more. Now you can post police everywhere spying on us." After he left, some of his friends, embarrassed by his outburst, offered reassurance that his views were unusual. "He's not like that all the time. He's a really nice lad," said one. The big challenge after London is to prevent more nice lads from growing up to be terrorists.
With reporting by Perry Bacon Jr., Brian Bennett, Sally B. Donnelly and Adam Zagorin/Washington, Jessica Carsen/Leeds, Helen Gibson and Ghulam Hasnain/London, James Graff/ Paris, Tim McGirk/Islamabad, Amir Mir/Lahore, and Lindsay Wise/Cairo