‘Mysterious caller from Pakistan instructed 7/7 London suicide bomber on phone’

LONDON - The ringleader of the 7/7 suicide bombings on London’s transport system received bomb-making instructions from a mysterious caller in Pakistan just days before the attacks, an inquest into the 2005 bombings has heard.

Mobile phone records showed a series of calls made from phone boxes in Rawalpindi to bomber Mohammad Sidique Khan, the Dawn quoted a police officer, as telling the hearing in London into the deaths of 52 people.

Metropolitan Police detective Mark Stuart said many of the calls were made through different Pakistani phone boxes within minutes of each other, suggesting that the caller there wanted to conceal his/her identity.

Hugo Keith, counsel to the inquests, asked Stuart: “Did you assess that those calls therefore were probably connected to some guidance or some means of communicating information concerned with the manufacture of the bombs and then ultimately their detonation?”

“Yes, I think they had to be,” a news agency quoted Stuart, as replying.

The inquest heard that Khan never made any calls to Pakistan himself, but that he had instead given contacts in that country- the numbers of four phones used purely for the purpose of the attacks.

Most of Khan’s conversations with the unknown person in Pakistan took place between May and June 2005, while the final, unanswered call to the phone was made on the afternoon of July 7 after 30-year-old Khan and three others had blown themselves up on three subway trains and a bus.

Khan and another suicide bomber Shehzad Tanweer are both known to have travelled to Pakistan in the months before the attack, where they are believed to have had contact with members of the Al-Qaeda network, and a video statement by Khan is also believed to have been filmed there, the report said. (ANI)