9.6 |
27 June 2007 to April 2008
On 29 June
2007, two cars containing gas canisters, explosives and nails were
found in
central
London, one outside a busy nightclub on Haymarket.9
The
following day, two men drove a blazing car into the main terminal
building at Glasgow
airport.10
The airport
was evacuated and flights suspended.
After a
meeting of COBR, the Government’s emergency committee,
Mr Brown raised the
UK threat
level for international terrorism to ‘Critical’, its highest
level.
SIS5 told
the Inquiry that one threat to the UK came from people, from a
range of
backgrounds,
who had been radicalised and motivated by what they had seen
reported
about
Iraq.11
In SIS5’s
view, the attacks in London and Glasgow in June 2007 fell
into
that category.
19.
The security
situation in Baghdad remained a cause for concern. On 1
July,
Mr Asquith
observed that, while the number of some events (for example,
suicide
attacks)
had gone down, “public perceptions from polls and our own
informal
soundings …
remains sharply negative”.12
20.
Lieutenant
General Graeme Lamb, the Senior British Military Representative –
Iraq
(SBMR-I)
reported that there was “much relief” that a planned march,
organised by
supporters
of Muqtada al-Sadr, had been called off.13
Lt Gen Lamb
considered that, had
the march
gone ahead, there would have been a “major sectarian clash” the
impact of
which might
have been a “terminal challenge” to the Iraqi Government and to
“the ability
of the
coalition forces to affect the outcome”. Work was in hand to
“understand exactly
how and
whose political pressure was brought to bear” in calling off the
march.
21.
Mr Jon
Day, MOD Director General Operational Policy from August 2007
to
October 2008,
told the Inquiry that:
“… there
were contacts between the UK and the Sadrists in Basra from the
spring of
2007, and
that as a result of this continuing dialogue, a series of – I think
I prefer to
use the
word “understandings” were reached with core elements of the
Sadrist JAM
[Jaysh
a-Mahdi] militias in Basra. These understandings ran from mid-June
2007
and they
therefore pre-dated and were separate from the national JAM
cease-fire in
9
The
Guardian, 1 July
2007, Terror
threat ‘critical’ as Glasgow attacked.
10
BBC
News, 30 June
2007, Blazing car
crashes into airport.
11 Private
hearing, 2010, pages 43-44.
12
eGram
28201/07 Baghdad to FCO London, 1 July 2007, ‘Iraq: Baghdad
Security Plan’.
13
Minute Lamb
to CDS, 1 July 2007, ‘SBMR-I Weekly Report (259) 1 July
07’.
14
Public
hearing, 6 January 2010, page 32.
185