LONDON, May 11 (UPI) -- The July 7 London bombings might have been prevented had U.K. security services had more resources, according to a parliamentary report published Thursday.
The cross-party Intelligence and Security Committee cleared the security services of any "culpable failures" ahead of the attacks, but noted there had been a number of leads on two of the bombers which could have been followed up more thoroughly with greater resources.
Perhaps most notably, Mohammed Siddique Khan, the alleged ringleader, and Shehzad Tanweer had been identified as meeting with other individuals under security service investigation in 2004, but the pair were judged to be involved only with funding "training and insurgency operations" in Pakistan and not thought to be interested in attacking Britain.
Committee Chairman Paul Murphy, a former Labor minister, said that while the decision not to investigate further was "understandable," had the pair been been fully investigated "it may have been that things may have been different."
The committee concluded that there had not been sufficient appreciation within the security services of the radicalization of British citizens, or the speed with which a facilitator or fundraiser such as Khan or Tanweer could become an attacker. Neither had the potential for suicide bombings within Britain been fully realized, it said.
The report made a number of recommendations including an expansion of resources, greater cooperation with foreign intelligence services and stronger efforts to combat the homegrown terror threat.
It added that the conflict in Iraq continued "to act as motivation and a focus of a range of terrorist-related activity in the U.K."
Opposition parties and Muslim groups urged an independent inquiry into the attacks -- which killed 52 people on London's transport network -- a call the government has so far rejected.
