Say Anything Blog

ROME (AP) - A suspect in the failed London transit bombings admitted Saturday to a role in the attack but said it was only intended to be an attention-grabbing strike, not a deadly one, a legal expert familiar with the investigation said.

Osman Hussain told interrogators he wasn't carrying enough explosives even to "harm people nearby," the expert told The Associated Press. The expert spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the ongoing investigation, which under Italian law must remain secret. . . .

Grilled by a pair of Italy's top anti-terrorism prosecutors, Hussain said that months ago in London, his chief - who he identified as "Muktar" - taught him how to assemble explosives using fertilizers and stuff explosives and timers into backpacks, the Rome daily La Repubblica said.

Hussain was referring to Muktar Said Ibrahim, 27, one of the other bombing suspects captured Friday in a London raid, the newspaper said. Ibrahim is suspected of planting explosives on a London bus on July 21.

"Muktar urged us to be careful" La Repubblica quoted Hussain as telling his interrogators. "We didn't want to kill, just sow terror."

He also reportedly told investigators the bombers were motivated by anger over the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

1. These terrorists never really meant to hurt anybody. This whole failed bombing plot may simply have been a ruse to bring them a media pulpit from which they can denounce the war in Iraq and further their extreme Islamic cause. This is unlikely, but a possibility. I think it unlikely that they'd subject themselves to arrest for attempted in the climate surrounding the 7/7 terror attacks, but then again these jihadists routinely blow themselves up for the sake of their cause...so anything is possible.



2. These terrorists did mean to hurt people only failed at it and are now doing their level best to garner sympathy to their cause by claiming that their attack wasn't meant to kill. It has been learned in the past that terrorists are trained to say certain things after being captured. Many of the terrorists complaining of abuse in Guantanamo Bay were trained to make those accusations to evoke sympathy with the "blame America first" crowd and thus make their detainment more difficult for authorities to maintain. Its not that hard, then, to believe that these claims being put forth by the terrorists in question now are also meant to confuse the issue.
   
   "We never meant to hurt you, we just wanted to draw attention to the horrible atrocities being committed by your government in Iraq" will become the party line for these folks. They'll liken their little bombing plot to little more than a stunt pulled by an ant-war protester (kind of like rolling marbles under the hooves of police horses of planting traces of bomb materials to be detected by bomb-sniffing dogs). Which is easy for them to do now since their bombs didn't go off and we have no idea of the extent of damage they wished to cause with their bombs. The terror apologists among us will no doubt leap to believe these claims and excuse the actions of these men since, as we all know, the real enemies are the soldiers in Iraq.