BRITAIN: Police investigating the July 7th London bombings say it is "entirely possible" that people who knew the attacks were being planned could yet face prosecution.
Just days before the first anniversary of the four attacks on London's transport network in which 52 innocent people died, Scotland Yard has confirmed it is at full stretch, with some 70 live counter-terrorism investigations continuing against a backdrop of "very sinister" intelligence received over the past year.
Amid renewed debate about the possible extension of police powers to detain terror suspects for up to 90 days without charge, former home secretary Charles Clarke said yesterday that suicide attacks carried out by British citizens "change the way in which the law has to be applied" in the UK.
At the same time, a row erupted over the scheduled appearance at a conference in London on Thursday of a Muslim scholar who has condemned the 7/7 attacks but described Palestinian suicide bombers as "martyrs". The London Evening Standard reported Dr Azzam Tamimi's planned attendance at the IslamExpo event with other guest speakers, including mayor Ken Livingstone, under the headline "Insult to the victims of 7/7".
Labour MP Louise Ellman, vice-chair of Labour Friends of Israel, said it was "of great concern that somebody who has stated on British television that they support suicide attacks on other countries" should be speaking to the London public at such a sensitive time.
However, Dr Tamimi, director of the London-based Institute of Islamic Political Thought, insisted the situation in Palestine was "entirely unrelated" to last year's attacks on London.
"I have always made a distinction between the right of the Palestinian people to fight the Israeli occupation and the terrorist attacks on London," he said. "To confuse the two is to do a great injustice to the British public."
Defending earlier comments about suicide bombers, Dr Tamimi went on: "I said if I were to be put in the same circumstances that the Palestinians are put in, I might resort to doing that. Millions of people say this around the world."
Meanwhile, with security tightening and the sense of alert heightening ahead of Friday's commemorative ceremonies, Peter Clarke, head of the Met's Anti-Terrorist branch, said the intelligence picture on the continuing terror threat was "very, very concerning".
Mr Clarke told a Scotland Yard briefing: "The level of counter- terrorist investigations has intensified during the past 12 months. There has been unrelenting demand for intelligence to be investigated and operations conducted to arrest suspects or disrupt terrorist activity.
"The Anti-Terrorist Branch has around 70 current investigations spanning London, the UK and the globe. That is the nature of what we face. The defence of the capital often starts many thousands of miles away."