7/7 Bombings Conspiracy Road Trip

I'm Andrew Maxwell, a comedian, but in this new series,

I'm on a serious mission

to explore the world of the conspiracy theorist.

Tonight, 7/7.

'The top of a bus has exploded.'

The bombings in London in 2005 was the most shocking event

in recent British history.

Four suicide bombers killed 52 innocent people

and injured over 700 others.

Unbelievably, there are a number of conspiracists

who doubt the official version of events.

And some of them believe

the British establishment was behind this tragic day.

It's just to continue the wars in the Middle East.

It's to get the resources we need to continue into the 21st century.

I think that's nonsense.

So I'm taking four of them on an extraordinary journey

to see if I can change their minds.

It's not going to be easy.

There's no evidence to suggest they boarded the carriages.

It just seems incredibly, incredibly coincidental.

It's me versus them as we go down the M1 from Leeds to London

to see where the attacks happened.

We're going to try and do this.

You have your instructions and your flip cams.

We'll meet eyewitnesses.

We know what happened that day because we were there.

And relatives of victims.

There's a huge space here where David should be.

They'll be confronted by experts.

To suggest that the Government would carry out an attack

against its own people is quite frankly ridiculous.

There'll be arguments...

-I'm not saying who did it.

-Tell me who you think did it.

I don't know who did it.

..fallouts...

Don't personally attack me, off camera, no more of it.

It's bollocks. I made it up.

..and tears...

It's not something that should happen to people.

..as we travel through the day that changed London for ever.

Welcome to Conspiracy Road Trip 7/7.

This programme contains some strong language

-How are you? I'm Jon.

-Hey, Jon, how are you?

Good to meet you.

Welcome on board. Welcome on board, Andrew.

-Hi, I'm Davina.

-Hello, Davina.

-Tony's the name.

-Hello, Tony.

-Hi, I'm Layla.

-Hey, Layla, come on board.

-Thanks.

Bing bong, good morning.

ALL: Good morning.

Good morning, and welcome to Conspiracy Road Trip 7/7.

THEY CLAP

OK. Obviously you're all on the bus

because you have various doubts and suspicions

about the official version of events around 7/7, is that correct?

ALL: Yes.

Let's see what we can find out.

Tony, an ex-security worker and CCTV expert,

believes 7/7 was carried out by the Government.

Tony Blair was a neo-conservative,

and I strongly believe that under the Blair government

it was a purely political motivated false flag operation.

Layla, journalist and part-time model,

thinks the official story doesn't add up.

Our government covers things up

and doesn't deal with things properly and lies to us about it

and does things in secret, that's pretty terrifying.

Or even though they're incredibly scary thoughts

that our own government could blow us up.

Jon, a political activist,

believes 7/7 was to help the Blair government

continue its war on terror.

No members of the public ever want war because, usually,

it's a son or a daughter that is being lost in that war.

So we needed that excuse to continue this war.

7/7 was our excuse.

Davina, a law student and recent convert to Islam,

doubts whether the four Muslim boys were to blame.

We don't know enough about them.

You know, whether or not this was something

that they were capable of, especially.

I mean, it is a very big deal that their personalities weren't explored.

That's a bit of a shame. I mean there's...

Back in the '70s, the cops in Britain

did fit up innocent Irish people for terrorist bombings.

I mean, to have a giant suspicion of the British establishment

I can understand,

but does that all add up to Blair and presumably Brown...

A dozen of them would have had to have been in on it.

Did they all conspire?

Did they blow up loads of other Brits in the city centre?

It doesn't add up for me.

Over the next week, each of my fellow travellers is going to

challenge me on a conspiracy theory they believe proves

the official version wrong, and that the four men who were

blamed for the attack were set up and weren't responsible.

Our first stop on our road trip is here in Beeston,

a poor area of Leeds and home to three of the bombers.

Mohammad Siddique Khan,

Shehzad Tanweer

and Hasib Hussain.

The first conspiracy theory comes from Davina.

Davina.

THEY APPLAUD

So one of my main concerns in terms of the bombers is, erm,

where they've come from, so their backgrounds.

She can't believe these young men could have been terrorists.

Have they done it because they've been forced to do it?

I don't understand enough about these four people

to conclude that they were capable of doing such a thing.

20-year-old Davina spent her childhood in America

and converted to Islam just after 7/7.

Now that I am Muslim I guess sometimes I feel like,

you know, people find me suspicious.

I sometimes feel people stare at me a little bit more.

I want to find somebody in Beeston who can get us in the mindset

of these supposed terrorist bombers.

'Detectives from West Yorkshire are moving door to door

'in the Beeston area tonight.

'Shame has overwhelmed these families.'

Oi, turn the camera off!

They don't want to be seen on camera.

Ah, because enough times when, when the 7/7 all kicked off,

half of them were saying stuff, you know when they were talking

and it were getting all twisted

and the opposite were getting written in the papers.

Since 7/7, it's difficult to find anyone who's willing to talk,

but I've persuaded Sasha, a single mother of four.

She lived opposite Shehzad Tanweer

and knew all three of the Beeston bombers.

OK, everyone, this is Sasha, say hello.

ALL: Hello. Hi, Sasha.

Can you take us around some of the spots where they hung out?

Definitely. Yeah, absolutely.

What's it like around here?

It was better before, I must admit.

Now everybody's scared to talk, no-one's...

You know, it's just changed everything.

We feel that they're suspicious of us being suspicious of them,

-you know, the Muslim community.

-Yeah, it's a cycle.

So this is the house here, you've got the third one,

the third block, you've got...

-This was Shezhad's house?

-This was his house, yeah.

22-year-old Shehzad was a sports science graduate

and lived most of his life in Beeston.

He worked in the chip shop at the top of the street.

I was in there on the Tuesday before 7/7,

so that would have been the 5th, and he was saying that he was

going to London, and he said, one of his mates asked

if he was going on the train and he went, "We're hiring a car."

You know, and he was just all bouncy and like, just like,

just telling his mates it's, you know, a day out, I think.

18-year-old Hasib Hussein, the youngest of the bombers,

was still living at home with his parents.

30-year-old Siddique Khan was the oldest

and well known in the community.

Siddique was a teaching assistant.

He's got a little girl, a little baby, you know.

And the police used to ring him up and say,

"Can you come and help us out with this?"

Like I say, he was taken on a tour of parliament by our Leeds MP,

and why would you do that with a terrorist?

If you look out the window, we're coming up to the Hamara Centre,

which was reported as being a terrorist recruitment building,

-you know, it's ridiculous.

-Really?

Anything to do with being healthy and happy

is what goes on in that building.

It's all good people doing good work and they were all sullied by this.

To my surprise, our local resident Sasha

seems to be supporting Davina's view.

Those were good Muslim boys.

They went to mosque, weren't terrorists, worked in the community.

I really don't believe that they were going to London to kill people.

-So there you go, that's my stance.

-Thank you.

What I could gather is Sasha was saying that these men were innocent.

There was nothing unusual about them.

If you were about to carry out something, you know,

that horrific, you would keep it on the down-low.

I don't think that anything she said is persuasive either way,

it just gives it a little bit of context.

To counter Sasha and Davina, I've contacted a Muslim academic

who specialises in the psychology of terrorism.

-OK. Hello, everyone, you all right?

-ALL: Hello.

This is Dr Russell Razzaque.

He is a psychiatrist who specialises in the mindset of terrorists.

I thought it might be quite illuminating,

particularly for you, Davina.

Yeah. I've studied a number of terrorists over time,

the 7/7 bombers, the 9/11 guys,

and a common theme for everybody who's,

almost pretty much everybody who's known them and met them,

that's family, people in the area, neighbours,

is usually one of enormous surprise.

Hasib Hussein's mum called the emergency services

when she heard about the bomb because she thought he was a victim,

she had no idea. And that really is how it works.

So with these guys,

they were sequestering themselves in the Hamara Community Centre

in Beeston where they would spend, you know, hours and hours

for kind of weeks and weeks on end up to 2.00 or 3.00 in the morning.

The place was closed, but they were the only ones there.

It's almost like they enter a parallel universe

where just them and a few other people know about what

they're talking about, and they don't include anybody else in that.

The grievance can start from a legitimate concern. I mean...

Was it, it was the invasion of Iraq?

Yeah, without doubt. Yeah, without doubt.

That was one of the biggest, one of the single biggest

recruitment causes for the 7/7 bombers as far as I'm concerned.

I mean, the stuff that I researched,

in terms of the actual recruitment process,

videos of the Iraq war

where people, innocent women and civilians were being killed,

were used as part of the recruitment and they were shown to people.

And that was really going on.

Now if you add that to somebody who also has experienced some,

potentially some racism or difficulty within their personal life,

you can conflate those two things.

That's when that grievance can really quickly become toxic.

The doctor was very insightful,

I think he gave me quite a bit of a psychological analysis

on what he thought the bombers were like in particular.

There are, you know, some gaps in the evidence,

there are some bits and pieces that, you know,

haven't really been explained a lot.

Davina's impressed by the psychiatrist,

but those other questions

mean she's not giving up on her conspiracy yet.

Next morning, we're leaving.

Our four coach trippers are going to recreate the exact journey

the four bombers took on the morning of 7/7

as they left Leeds in the early hours for London.

At 3.59 on 7th of July 2005,

the bombers are caught on CCTV leaving Leeds.

Their first stop is the Woodall petrol station

just outside Sheffield.

So this is the service station where they stopped

and he was noted on CCTV going into the service station

here on the M1, Shehzad Tanweer.

It's 160 miles down the M1 to Luton

where the bombers caught the train to London Kings Cross.

The next conspiracist to put forward their claim is 28-year-old Jon.

He works for a political group known as We Are Change.

Can I just give you one of these each please?

It's very important information.

We Are Change holds people accountable in positions of power,

whether that be in politics,

whether that be in finance or in business or in the corporate world.

There is a lot of stuff going on under the radar

that the people don't know about.

Jon believes that the train times were falsified by the Government.

They actually made reference to the bombers getting the 7.40am train

from Luton to Kings Cross.

12 months later it came out through various sources,

through the Freedom Of Information Act request

that that train didn't actually run.

The Home Office then had to back pedal,

the police back pedalled and said that the bombers got the 7.25.

The issue here is that

if there is one piece of major glaring information that is

wrong in that account, what else in the account is also,

you know, fabricated or not true or potentially, you know, wrong?

Our conspiracists think that even if they had caught an earlier train

it would have still been difficult for the bombers

to have reached their destination on time.

They feel the official account just doesn't add up.

We're going to try and do this.

We're going to try and take the 7.24 train.

Each one of you is going to take the identity/journey of each one

of the bombers and just see whether time-wise it is actually feasible.

I have your instructions and your flip cams.

Jon, you'll be Mohammad Siddique Khan. There's your instructions.

Davina, you're Jermaine Lindsay.

Tony, you're Shehzad Tanweer

and finally, Layla, you're Hasib Hussain.

I wouldn't suggest you out loud say anything about a bombing

on...on the film.

But just try and match it,

and let's see whether, how close we can get to the official account.

Here in the car park,

the three Beeston boys were joined by Jermaine Lindsay from Aylesbury.

According to the official report and the CCTV footage,

they set off from their cars at 7.20.

Everybody all right?

Even doing it as something like this it's nerve-racking,

I find it just nerve-racking.

We've got three minutes to get our tickets and get on the train,

get on the platform and the train.

-OK, let's do it.

-We'll see you at the other end.

-OK.

Actually, it's not that long a walk at all, is it?

Yeah, it's not a long walk.

And we're heading now to the station entrance.

Just take a shot of that CCTV camera up there,

it's quite important, that's the shot that took them.

They're seen entering the station at 7.22,

which gave them only three minutes to buy their tickets

and catch the 7.25.

There's a man at the ticket machine.

It's 7.22.

I'm starting to fret that they're not going to make it.

I mean, we told them not to run

but also not to sort of stroll along either.

OK, so we've missed the 7.25.

So we're going to have to get the 7.32.

Now Jon's made fact that we're going to be pushing it

and I've said, "Yeah, we are, I need to detonate mine at 8.50,"

which is an interesting statement in front of everyone.

I suddenly realised what I'd said.

Now on the train, I want my team to find out

if it's possible to reach their central London destinations by 8.50

when the Underground bombs exploded.

Do you think that we would have caught the train, you know,

if we hadn't fiddled around at the ticket barriers?

I just don't know how they've done it in time.

I just don't understand.

There's loads of city boys, there's loads of people in suits,

there's loads of people, men and women just on their way to work.

It would be quite easy to get through with a rucksack bomb

on your back, very easily indeed.

So I think at the rate we're going, I will be on time.

So I'm catching the Piccadilly line service to Russell Square.

I'm going down the escalators.

It's quite a long time to think about things.

They would have to have had a lot of guts.

They would have had to have true belief and true confidence

that they're doing it for the right reasons.

They would have had to just keep repeating it to themselves.

So I've arrived here at 8.39.

It's just taken three minutes to walk down St Pancras concourse

to get to the Underground.

It's 8.35, I'm now boarding the train to Aldgate.

It's 8.51 and we're now pulling into Aldgate Station.

They would have definitely been on schedule to do what they did,

well within the time, with approximately...

In fact, on time, which is very spine chilling.

Tony, Jon and Davina all make their destinations by 8.50,

the time the bombs simultaneously exploded.

The Aldgate blast killed eight people, including Tanweer,

and injured 171.

I'm very shocked by all that.

I timed it, I don't know if something went in my head

as if to say, good God, you know,

this is something that could have actually been carried out.

And I think at some point later in the day I'm going to have

a bit of an emotional moment with myself.

The Russell Square explosion killed 27 people, including Lindsay,

and injured over 340.

Things had to be timed quite precisely for everything

to have happened at 8.50, 8.50, 8.50 consecutively.

It has made me doubt the official narrative

in terms of time speculation like a lot.

At Edgware Road, the bomb killed seven, including Khan,

and injured 163 people.

I've got no discrepancies with the timings.

I think that, you know, it's more than likely that they could

have got to those locations in the times that we are given at 8.50.

I'm still not totally convinced that, that they

knew what they were up to.

Or if they did know what they were up to,

that they weren't somehow coerced into doing those deeds.

Meanwhile, the youngest of the group,

18-year-old Hussain, was pacing the streets outside Kings Cross.

One theory is that Hasib Hussein just freaked out

and had started to do very, very irrational things.

And he walked in pretty much a straight line into this McDonald's.

Mobile phone records show that he tried unsuccessfully

to contact his three fellow bombers.

He was here for ten minutes, ten whole minutes by himself,

and in that time he called his friends.

The other school of thought is that he was innocent,

that he was some kind of patsy, and that he was just

worried about his friends and wanted to check if they were OK.

Now Hasib Hussein boarded the number 30 bus.

The number 30 bus was re-routed to Tavistock Square

due to the Tube bombings.

This is the BMA, the British Medical Association

on the corner of Tavistock Square,

this is where the fourth bomb went off.

At 9.47, the bus bomb killed 14 people, including Hussein,

and injured over 110.

-Hello.

-Hello, well?

Oh, my goodness, what a journey.

I feel like this guy was really, really lost

and did not know what to do.

-Yeah, and aborted his mission perhaps.

-Changed his mind.

And then went back to it in the best way that he could.

Still, from your experience of the four,

it could have all happened within that timeframe?

Oh, totally.

The coincidence that the bus was diverted to

the British Medical Association, a building full of doctors,

makes my conspiracists very suspicious.

It's just good fortune.

It's central London, there's doctors everywhere.

I find it unusual that that was the only bus that was taken

control of by the Met, trying to make it look like

the authorities had everything under control.

And you know, if I was pushed to it I think I would say that.

-Really?

-Yeah.

You think there's elements in the government that would murder civilians?

-Oh, absolutely.

-For a PR stunt?

-Oh, absolutely.

Well it's not a PR stunt,

this is to continue the wars in the Middle East, this is to get

the resources that we need to continue into the 21st century.

Really? Do you think so?

It's how the world works, mate.

It's not quite oil, it's on the issue of the geopolitical landscape

being re-sculptured for the, for big private enterprise.

-Yeah.

-For example, let's say you're going to bomb Iraq.

So you're saying it's big business did this?

-It's big business, absolutely.

-You think big business?

There could be a big business element to it, absolutely.

The next morning it's Tony's chance to introduce one of his claims

and it centres around one of his favourite subjects, CCTV.

What we're going to look at next is the, er,

is the CCTV issues surrounding 7/7.

42-year-old Tony is from Selby, North Yorkshire.

I'm Tony Topping and my...I'm actually a lecturer and researcher.

Before that I was involved in security, although I can't go into

too many details about what that was all about.

So far we've proved the bombers could have got there in time,

but there's no CCTV evidence after this image in Kings Cross train station

actually showing them on the Tube or the Underground platforms.

The police service received no warning about these attacks.

I'm introducing Tony to Brian Paddick

who was the Deputy Assistant Commissioner

of the Metropolitan Police on the day.

One of the sort of key parts about the 7/7 conspiracy theories

is the CCTV footage or lack thereof. Tony, do you want to...?

Yeah, my background is security as well

and I used to liaise with the police on CCTV issues.

But on the actual day of the incident,

we find nothing on the Underground to place the bombers at the scene

of the crime, and I wondered if you could shed any light on it.

-Er, I don't know, to be honest with you.

-Right.

Er, there could be a whole host of reasons why that,

that footage is missing other than it wasn't those guys who did it.

The system isn't recording properly, one of the cameras is out,

er, the recording medium was full and a whole series of systems

that operate that could fail that result in an incomplete picture.

The difficulty with it is of course

-it raises suspicions in people's minds.

-Yes.

But the fact is that there is other evidence

to place the bombers at the scene in terms of DNA and so forth,

and identity documents and that sort of thing.

So unfortunately CCTV is not always complete.

Thanks, mate.

How is it possible,

how is it feasible that the most surveyed city in the world,

all the CCTV footage has either disappeared or didn't work?

On the bus it didn't work, OK, I'll let that go.

But on the Tube apparently there was 20 minutes

where all the CCTV footage was down that morning.

I'm sorry...

It reeks of an inside job.

I would like to see some CCTV evidence of them boarding the train.

For me personally, as a personal choice, I would like to see that.

And then I can say, "Yeah."

Brian hasn't persuaded Tony or Jon at all.

I wonder if meeting somebody who experienced the bombings first hand

may help convince them.

Jacqui Putnam witnessed the Edgware Road Tube explosion.

Thank you for meeting us, Jacqui.

So you, on the day of 7/7, you were on the Edgware Road Tube?

Yes, I was. I walked past Siddique Khan.

I walked further on and got on the train in the next carriage.

I know a lot of survivors of this act have had different conclusions

about what happened that day.

Well, we know what happened that day because we were there. We saw it.

Yeah, more importantly who caused it, how it was caused.

Well, we know who caused it. On my train, it was Siddique Khan.

They made sure they left enough evidence that it was them,

erm, and plus they were seen.

I've spoken to Danny Biddle, who's the worst injured survivor.

I mean, there are people who say there's no way of proving

that even these four men blew themselves up.

Well, Danny saw Siddique Khan reach down and detonate the bomb,

so I don't understand why people would say that, you know,

that doesn't make any sense.

He stood on that platform when I walked past him

and looked at me and thought, "You might die today."

He didn't care what kind of person I was. He was going to do that.

When that happens, when people are blown apart in front of you,

when you've just got on the train on your way to work,

you don't see the world in the same way any more after that.

You live in a different place and you have to spend

the rest of your life in that place and come to terms with it.

You know, I mean, Jacqui, I can relate to Jacqui

because she reminds me of someone that I really care about.

And I'm sure a lot people on that train as well that went

through something similar, you know, you could sympathise with them,

you can empathise with how they felt that day.

It does, it does get to you, you know.

I'm beginning to make a bit of progress.

Jacqui has convinced Davina that the bombers were definitely on the Tube

and capable of committing the murders.

My conclusion is that the boys were definitely there,

atrocities did occur.

It is something they could have been capable of.

So that's where I stand at the moment.

But Jon is more difficult to sway.

You know, in all due respect to Jacqui,

there are other eye witnesses that have said that they saw

where the bomb went off and there was nobody standing there.

There wasn't a bag there, there wasn't an Asian man on their train.

So at the moment I'm totally, you know, in two minds.

Tony's fighting back.

He's going to present what he thinks is the ultimate conspiracy,

that even if the bombers were on the Tubes,

they were just innocent bystanders.

These four men were hired as patsies. Patsies meaning fall guys,

patsies meaning people who were set up to do something.

So I think that these men were hired as part of a training drill.

They'd been hired as actors.

These four guys are actually setting out to do what they do.

Unbeknownst to them there's a secondary operation running

-of more precision which is intent on inflicting...

-Parallel.

Yeah, parallel, it's parallel.

Jon agrees with Tony and has more to add to his theory.

It's been established there was a mock terrorist exercise

going on in London on 7/7 using the same Tube stations as the bombers.

Jon thinks this was a Government cover-up for the real attack.

One of the major smoking guns for 7/7 for me has got to be

Peter Power's drills that he was running on the morning of 7/7.

'At 9.30 this morning we were actually running an exercise

'with over 1,000 people in London based on simultaneous bombs

'going off precisely at the railway stations it happened this morning.'

Peter Power went on to BBC and ITV,

and of the afternoon went on to Norwegian television and said this.

'Just to get this right, you were actually working

'today on an exercise that envisioned virtually this scenario?'

'Er, almost precisely.'

Peter Power is an ex-Scotland Yard policeman.

Jon thinks that the four men who were blamed for 7/7

were duped into playing the part of mock terrorists in Peter's exercise.

I'm sure if people were just to look at the facts,

you would be able to actually see it for what it is.

Peter Powers declined to be interviewed but made a statement.

"The actual exercise was planned to take place in a single room

"in central London with six people sitting around a table.

"Everything was simulated in that room.

"Although I have been happy in the past to clarify with anyone,

"all too often, it has done nothing to assuage the rather weird beliefs

"of some who, exploiting their views on the internet,

"seem convinced my company was involved in a conspiracy that day."

I'm not saying that the people who are running the drills

are actually involved in the actual terrorist events,

that is a parallel part of the operation.

The drill is there to cover the real event.

What are we saying, Jon?

We are saying that the same day the Government bombed themselves,

they were running drills to cover it over at the same time.

You're accusing your country of killing its own people.

-A very serious accusation, right?

-I'm not saying who did it, I'm not.

-Tell me who you think did it.

-I don't know who did it.

If I knew who did it, you know,

maybe I'd be in court trying to prosecute them, as opposed

to on a programme with you trying to disprove what I'm trying to say.

Jon is struggling to prove his point.

To support his case, he wants me to meet somebody on his side.

He takes us 200 miles north to his home town.

We're on our way to meet Dr Naseem.

He thinks that one in four Muslims doubt the official story,

the official government narrative, Home Office narrative to 7/7

and that there is some type of conspiracy behind that.

After the 7/7 bombs, the Imam of this mosque, Dr Naseem,

has distributed thousands of copies of a conspiracy film.

It argued that the British government planned

the suicide bombings to incite hatred against Muslim.

-This is Andrew.

-Hello, Andrew.

This is Layla, Tony and Davina.

I had massive questions a few years ago.

I came to see you and spoke to you about those doubts,

and these guys share partly some of my beliefs.

There's a lot of mistrust about the Government.

The political leadership is considered to be a bunch of liars.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

If you agree with that, then anything they say is a lie as well, isn't it?

People can be liars, but they would not be necessarily murderers.

-Is that not true, Doctor?

-Oh, they can lie about murder.

What role do you believe these four men played in it?

I don't know. I don't have the evidence.

I mean, because obviously their bodies were found there.

Yes. 56 people died, it was a horrific action that was taken.

But who did it? That is the question that is not being answered.

We had a meeting with the MI5 here in the mosque.

OK.

And I put it to them,

surely when you have reasonable evidence that this man is

going off the rail, we will go and collect the whole family.

We can stop it before anything happens. OK, God bless.

All that he would accept was that amongst the dead on the day

were four British Muslim men.

That was it.

None of the other evidence to suggest otherwise,

he either didn't know about or he completely dismissed.

Now Andrew's questions were probing

but Dr Naseem's answers were minimal but was giving good retorts.

Erm, he was able to sort of answer the question with another question,

"Well, you show me the proof."

The saddest of all was the bit where he said that his,

that his mosque could have spiritually steered

those four men away from what they were doing.

No, you've not done, you've obviously, it's not logic.

Tony seems to be tying himself in knots.

How can the man in the mosque have prevented the men from doing

the bombings if they were meant to be patsies?

I'll explain again.

A group of four Muslim men, they have outside influences.

We're going to approach them to commit an act of violence.

Mm-hm, right.

There is a spiritual ministry within the mosque

that would have steered them away from committing that act of violence

had they told somebody.

I'll stop you there because that makes perfect sense and that's right.

-Yeah.

-But your theory all the way along has been

they were patsies, they didn't do it,

they didn't know what they were doing, all that kind of stuff.

-No, no, that's not what, no.

-You're just exploring avenues.

I'm exploring avenues. Let's do some research and come back to it.

No, I'm just asking you what your theories are,

you've got all defensive and weird about it.

I'm not defensive and I'm not weird, I'm trying to explain to you.

Perhaps I shouldn't get so angry.

I get very worked up and then I lose my focus and get angry

and people think I'm directing my anger at them,

when really I get upset about what I've seen.

I don't quite understand why he was so upset,

but you know, all I said was that sounds contradictory

can you explain it to me so it isn't contradictory any more.

Tony is obviously the die-hard conspiracist.

And you know, he's a self-described die-hard conspiracist.

He's somebody that, you know,

I've started just for my own amusement making up bull crap stories

and saying, "Hey, Tony, how's this for a scenario?"

Can I put a scenario to you and see what you think?

I mean, if somebody was warned about this, you know,

this is going to happen in the next few days,

maybe the training exercise was to not make people panic.

I've just got some completely unconnected dots,

connected them together and gone, "How about this, Tony?"

He's like, "Yes, very astute."

That's a very...

To me that's more likely than the Government orchestrating everything.

That's very astute is that.

He's not interested in the truth,

he's interested in his version of events.

Now it's time for Layla herself to have her claim examined

as we head back down south.

32-year-old Layla is from Staffordshire

and her journalistic background forces her to question everything.

I proof read articles for magazines,

and I did this for a magazine that was about alternative subjects.

And I had to proof read a load of conspiracy theories.

I started to think, "Oh, my God, that's weird, that doesn't add up.

"Very strange that there's lots of different versions of events here,

"it's very strange that things are so secretive."

Her big question surrounds who actually detonated the bombs.

What I heard was that the bombs were already in the train,

that the bombs were set off remotely

and they were underneath at the bottom of the train,

as opposed to, you know, the official version of events

which was that they were carried in a backpack.

I want them to meet Chris Hunter, a former Army bomb disposal expert

and intelligence officer who is now a counter-terrorism consultant.

Basically, the first thing you look at is

where the majority of the damage is inside the structure.

So obviously, when you look at, for example, the Aldgate device,

you can see there's very clearly a hole in the bottom of

the carriage floor and significant damage directly above that too.

I heard that everybody that was sat down on the Tube

was more badly injured than everybody that was standing up

because the bombs were underneath the carriages.

Could that happen? Is that the way these things...?

Erm... It wouldn't really be consistent with it.

If you had a bomb underneath a train,

the chances are it would actually cause it to derail.

And you didn't see anything like that at all.

What you saw was, you know, very, very typical of a blast going down,

going up and then travelling through a carriage that was full of people.

It's just like when you've got a small pond,

you drop a stone in there and see the waves going outwards,

and then as they hit the edge of the pond

they start to come back inwards again as well.

So you could suck some floor back up?

-Basically, blow it down...

-Is it that powerful?

Yeah, we knew that from also the fact that

there was fragmentation in these devices as well.

Basically, you know, bits of metal sellotaped to the,

or taped to the actual bombs themselves.

And those were used to effectively enhance the damage

to the individuals on the carriage itself.

That is absolutely shocking and I'm shocked. I'm shocked to hear that.

I... I didn't know that,

and this is nowhere on any of the conspiracy theories that I've read.

What they do is effectively if you've just got explosive

you get blast damage where, as if the blast isn't damaging enough

as it is, they actually add nuts and bolts and things.

So you get these sort of, you know,

critical puncture wounds, effectively.

I've never met anybody who's in the, has any connection to

the intelligence service, you're the first person.

So it's just, from your own personal experience of working in that field,

what is the feasibility of even an element

of the British security services doing this?

To suggest that the Government would carry out an attack

against its own people, I just think is quite frankly ridiculous.

It was a very clear explanation of how a blast affects people.

Seeing and speaking to a proper qualified expert or somebody

that's, you know, actually been through the experience

is completely different to sitting there on the internet

reading some self-proclaimed expert who could be absolutely anybody.

Layla is finally turned away from the conspiracies,

but what about the rest of them?

I'm quite frank, I don't know what's going on now,

I don't know what side of the fence I'm on.

I see this, that and the other on the internet.

To be frank, at this moment in time

I don't know what side I'm on with everything at the moment.

I don't know whether I'm coming or going.

But what's happening, Layla, is we're being challenged

from another dimension.

We're being challenged by, by a public narrative, a proper narrative

that everybody considers to be the logical explanation.

That's the thing, it's the logical explanation.

-No, it's not logical.

-Why is it not the logical explanation?

-Because it could be a possible lie.

-Because it could be a possible lie?

Yes, it could be a possible lie.

Do you realise how ridiculous that sounds?

No, I don't realise that at all.

The thing that pisses me off is neither of you understand logic.

Oh, give over. No, no, no, no, no.

You have a problem with logical thinking.

No, no, not at all. I don't agree with you, I'm sorry.

Yeah, well you do.

I don't agree with you, I'm sorry. I don't agree with that at all.

Do you know what, I've got a confession to make, right?

I've been, just to see what you would say, coming up with

wild speculations and theories and throwing them at you just for fun.

-Wild speculations, no it's not.

-And you've said, "Hmm, very astute."

And I've been doing that on purpose and making up some bollocks.

-No, you haven't.

-Yes, I have, I've got it on camera.

No you haven't, no you haven't.

I fed you some bollocks as a possible scenario

and you've gone, "Hmm."

-No, because it's a valid scenario.

-No, no, it's not. I made it up.

-Don't personally attack me.

-It's bollocks.

Right, off camera, no more of it, no more of it from you now

because you're personally attacking me and I'm not having it.

I don't want to comment any more on it.

-I'm not personally attacking you.

-Yes, you are.

-Well done, you.

-Well, done you, Layla.

I'm kind of pissed off with the whole thing to be honest.

Of course you will be, OK. That's fine then.

I tell you what, for the rest of the three days don't bother.

Don't come anywhere near me. If it's that bad for you.

I think that's enough.

That is enough, it certainly is. Shocking, absolutely shocking.

He was just getting on my tit end basically,

he was just getting on my nerves because he would just not be logical.

And he expected me to believe everything he said

just because he said it, and that's irritating.

I'm very upset about what has happened today.

There is no other way to describe it.

I'm keeping my emotions in check,

but frankly I could just burst into tears with it all.

It's upset me greatly.

I sense that he feels shaken by how horrible the world is sometimes,

that's my sense, and it upsets him.

And I think he feels better having somebody to blame

and having a mission and feeling like he's doing something about it.

It's the last day and there's one more conspiracy claim left,

and it's another of Tony's.

You've been led to believe that it was home made bombs

that blew up the number 30 bus.

But there is reports in the press

that military-grade explosive material was found at the scene.

I don't think that homemade bombs would be able to

cause the damage at the level and weight that were in the rucksacks.

Take a look.

18 Alexandra Grove.

This is the Leeds ex-council flat turned bomb factory

that the bombers used as their base.

The police found buckets of sand-coloured sludge,

boxes of hair dye and pans full of hydrogen peroxide.

But could it have really caused this?

We're going to find out.

We're at a quarry in Wiltshire

to carry out our own controlled explosion using homemade bombs.

Sidney.

Sidney Alford is an explosives expert

and has been tinkering with bombs since he was 11.

He specialises in IEDs and has helped the Army in Afghanistan.

Right, well, Sidney, my friend here Tony

believes part of the conspiracy theory is that

a homemade explosive of that size

wouldn't have the capacity to cause that damage.

I see. So you'd like me to settle that simple question?

-Yes, absolutely.

-Just don't fiddle with anything, all right?

Because if something... There's not much nasty stuff there,

but if there is something which is labelled something naughty,

it probably is something naughty.

So no fiddling please.

So let's go and have a look at the thingamabob.

-Are we OK to...?

-Yes, yes, Sidney.

Using all of the available information from the inquest,

Sidney is going to replicate the terrible events

of the bus bombing in Tavistock Square.

This is my last chance to convince Jon or Tony they're wrong

so I'm hoping this experiment goes my way.

The bomber or the bomb was either on this seat or this seat.

-M-hm.

-Would you think it's likely that we're going to see

the roof sort of being ripped off halfway

and the back end being blown away?

I'll show you, we'll break the windows.

I expect this will have to give.

I expect that seat will be pushed down.

Er I would expect the bus to be a write off.

I'll commit myself no further at this stage.

In this container I have black pepper,

and in these two containers I have a hydrogen peroxide solution.

I'm not telling you what concentration the peroxide is.

I have to depend upon what is reported in various sources and

such things as the policeman reporting

that he smelt pepper after the bang.

That is a very strong clue, because if something smells like pepper,

guess what it's likely to be?

I'm just cutting a cross in the plastic

to facilitate pushing a detonator in.

It looks so tiny down there.

It is really small.

On the other end of this is our bomb.

BOMB SIREN

Here we go, people.

Could a homemade explosive blow up a bus?

BOMB EXPLODES

Does everybody now believe that homemade bombs can blow up a bus?

-Yeah.

-Everybody convinced?

-Yeah.

-Yeah?

-Wow, look at it, look.

-Look. Can it blow the roof off a bus?

-Looks like it.

-Homemade explosive? Everybody convinced? Tony?

Yeah, absolutely convinced, totally.

Stuff that anybody can get their hands on.

And we got it on camera and the other camera down there.

BOMB EXPLODES

I want to whisper, you know?

You want to whisper.

You want to whisper, yeah.

-Part of the bus.

-It's a bit of the bus.

Watch that wire there.

Mums, babies, commuters, tourists, everybody gets on a London bus.

Surely they'll now accept the facts of what happened

on that terrible day.

The next time you're speaking to anybody on the internet who says

that a homemade explosive can't do this, right?

I can't disprove everything to you, OK?

Jon, does this make any difference to you?

Well, I mean, it certainly makes a difference.

I had heard those things, I don't subscribe to them.

I'm not a chemist, I'm not a bomb expert, erm you know,

I'm just a bloke, and, yes, you have proven to me

that a professional can make a hydrogen peroxide bomb

with black pepper and rip the roof off a, off a London bus.

Proved it to me, mate, proved it to me.

You've proved it, that's it, end of.

I think you've got to be sensible with it, Andrew.

You've certainly made me wake up and smell the coffee on the issue,

definitely so.

I just, it does my head in, I don't need it any more.

It does my head in.

I'm certainly going to put to bed, I think, the CCTV one

and the bus one.

So I think we can, we're heading down the road now of it being

a complete and almighty cock up rather than a conspiracy,

failings in security, failings in surveillance.

I have to say, I didn't see you taking this route at all with it.

-No.

-At the start, because I mean there's,

there's all sorts of carry on.

There is a portion of my mind, there are some unanswered questions,

but I've certainly woken up to be more sensible

about the information that I'm looking at. I certainly have.

It's almost the end of our journey

and we're visiting the 7/7 memorial in Hyde Park.

I want the group to meet Graham Foulkes who lost his son David

in the bombing.

Graham, thank you for coming. Andrew.

-Hi.

-We got here a couple of minutes before you

and we saw your son's name on the memorial.

David was 22 and this was his first trip to London

on the Underground on his own, and he stood next to Siddique Khan.

Somebody said to me that the first Christmas,

the first birthday, the first anniversary are difficult,

and you get through those and after that everything gets easier.

It's simply not true.

I mean, standing here now by the memorial

and these columns here are for the Edgware Road people,

the six people that were killed in Edgware Road,

and I feel uncomfortable.

There's a visceral feeling that overwhelms you.

There's a huge space here where David should be.

And I don't know, people talk about black holes in space,

and I've got my own black hole and it comes with me everywhere.

Do you still feel angry about this

or do you feel less angry or more angry as time has gone on?

I'll never ever stop feeling angry about the death of my son.

Mm-hm

And when you know, when you read into it

and you get to see as much as I and many others have,

-there is an anger at being let down.

-Yeah.

In the build up to the attacks, we'd heard that the security services

had been noting Siddique Khan for a number of years.

But at the inquest we found out they'd actually been trailing him

since the year 2000.

OK.

They knew he'd been to Pakistan to terrorist training camps twice,

so they knew that he was an active bomber, they knew he was actively

involved in terrorism and yet they still allowed him to get through.

By letting him get through,

you're not saying they deliberately let him get through?

I'm saying that their systems that they had in place were inadequate

and they allowed him to get through.

There's nothing in the conspiracy theories,

there's nothing of substance, absolutely nothing.

The main areas that concerned me

are how could MI5 follow Siddique Khan for ten years?

That is an area for concern.

Because obviously I think, well, if they'd done their job properly

my son would still be alive and so would 51 other people.

We're at the end of our trip and I want to know

whether I've succeeded in changing any of their minds.

I don't think there's a conspiracy, I just don't.

Some of the coincidences are so startling that you can't help

but think, "Oh, my God, that must, you know, it must mean something."

But then again, some of the coincidences are equally amazing,

but meaningless.

Davina, you know,

this whole thing could have been extremely awkward for her.

Her key thing was a good point, you know, this seems so out of place.

I think that definitely they were there and, you know,

they do have the capacity to commit these atrocities.

At the end of the day for me, like there is still

a lack of information in terms of what happened after the incident

and reasons behind why these men did what they did.

But I do believe that what happened and what was done,

was done by these men.

At the start of this trip I was like,

"There's no moving on this guy at all."

I'll be honest with you, I'd almost written Tony off.

Mr Topping.

Mr Maxwell, sir.

Oh, what have you started here with me, matey? Goodness gracious me.

-Really?

-Yeah.

It's been quite an experience, I'd like to thank you for it.

Erm, it's been amazing. It's certainly matured me.

I couldn't explain what that maybe meant to you, but it's

just the research I've been looking at and all that kind of thing.

You have to be very careful what you look at,

you have to be very sensible with it.

And I've clearly seen now that a conspiracy can be blown out

of all proportion and it just grows like a virus, erm,

and it can affect incidents, it can affect lives, it can affect people.

That's probably an equation that is missing from the conspiracy theory.

The victims with conspiracy theorists have no say.

So a surprising turnaround for those three.

But there remains one more coach tripper.

You know, Jon took bits and pieces on board.

He accepted when something we could kind of irrefutably prove,

AKA yes, homemade explosive can do extraordinary damage to a bus.

But ultimately he's coming from a different world view to me.

Mr Jon, Mr Scobie.

Of course it does not mean, Andrew, that those guys did do it,

that does not prosecute those four men.

So I do maintain that 7/7 is a justification to continue

these wars in the Middle East and, erm, continue empire building

and to continue British Imperialism spreading across the world.

For me, this film is a love letter to the city I love.

I love London.

The idea of somebody attacking it like they did,

it's like killing a loved one.

But these conspiracy theories, you know, they feed off suspicion.

Who am I to tell you not to be suspicious of the media,

the political class or the cops?

I don't blame you, I am too.

But does that add up to a giant murderous conspiracy?

I don't see that.

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