A tape of one of those involved in the July 7 London bombings has aired on Al Jazeera. In the video Mohammad Sidique Khan, the classroom assistant from Leeds responsible for the Edgeware Road blast blamed the people of the UK for crimes carried out against those in Iraq and Afghanistan:
Until we feel security, you will be our targets... Until you stop the bombing, gassing, imprisonment and torture of my people we will not stop this fight... We are at war and I am a soldier. Now you too will taste the reality of this situation.
The lack of such a tape had helped along the theory that perhaps these men weren't actual suicide bombers, but rather dupes manipulated into placing explosives rather than men committed to martyrdom. The recording had been edited and also contained a message from Ayman al-Zawahri, al-Qaeda's Bin Laden stand in.
There's still speculation as to how linked the British born bombers actually were to al-Qaeda.
Further claims that the bombers were acting in response to the UK's involvement in the inferno in Iraq have again been dismissed by Jack Straw.
