How I reported the 7/7 bombings

0:00A couple who I've spoken to said that they were on the Piccadilly line when they heard a loud flash. The lights went off on the train. There was screaming. People tried to start breaking the glass on the tube train with their umbrellas. On the Sky News Daily, with me Gareth Barlow, how the story of the 7-7 bombings unfolded. And 20 years on, what's the lasting impact? That's coming up after this.

0:28London on the morning of 7th of July 2005 was still basking in the news that it would host the 2012 Olympics announced just the day before. That mood was shattered by four explosions during rush hour. I've just spoken to a police officer and he told me that it seems like there's been a collision underground on the tube line. But clearly no one here seems to be entirely sure what has gone on yet. We now know that suicide bombers set off three bombs just before nine o 'clock on the underground and an hour later the fourth on a double-decker bus, killing 52 people. But on the day itself, details of the nature and scale of the attacks was slow to emerge.

1:12Sky News' crime correspondent Martin Brunt was on his way to work in London when he began to realise something very serious had happened. He's with us now to talk about how he covered the story and the impact of the attacks.

1:28So it's the morning of the 7th of July. You were on a train at that point.

1:33Martin Brunt:I was, and like everybody else seemingly on that train, I was absorbed with the news from the day before that London had won the Olympic Games for 2012. And the train stopped just outside Croydon. and as southern rail passengers we weren't surprised at that but what did surprise me at least was that the guard came through our carriage saying that there was a power surge on the tube network and the whole of the underground system had gone down and I'd never heard the underground system being completely knocked out so I was already beginning to think that something was up. And that was the thing wasn't there we've got these three instances that have occurred at Edgware Road, at Allgate, between then Kings Cross and Russell Square.

2:25And to start with, it didn't seem apparent as to exactly what was to come.

2:31Martin Brunt:Yes, the story unravelled quite slowly, not like it would today. Remember, Gareth, there was no social media, no Twitter, no Facebook. We couldn't, as journalists, plunder those platforms for reaction and instant eyewitness accounts. So it was a bit difficult to find out what was going on. Officially, at around 9.20, Scotland Yard put out a message saying that there was a fire at Allgate Station. But around that time, I called Scotland Yard, and I did get rather more than that from a senior press officer who told me that there were a number of incidents, it was serious, and there were casualties.

3:10Martin Brunt:And I said, is anybody dead? And he He said, yes, I think so, but please don't report that yet. And I said, is it terror? And he said, maybe. And that's really how it stayed for a little while. And I recounted all that on my mobile phone, live on Sky News from my train carriage. The situation is very unclear, but certainly police have reacted. And I know that there have been some serious casualties. As you said already, it's a major incident. Anti-terrorist branch officers are clearly involved and on the scene, some at least of those reported explosions, but there isn't any confirmation at the moment.

3:52Martin Brunt:By the end of that, those people listening around me were quite alarmed, and so was I. So you've had that slightly chilling phone call that indicates that it's probably far worse than what the Guard had suggested. You're still stuck on a train near Croydon. Where does the rest of your morning go? Well, while I was on the phone doing that first sort of slightly dramatic live report, our colleague, a news producer, Bob Mills, had also phoned in and he had seen something far more dramatic. He had seen the bus, the number 30 red double-decker bus, blow up, to all intents and purposes, in Tavistock Square.

4:29Martin Brunt:I was walking up the street, heard a loud explosion, and the next thing I saw was people running towards me saying a bomb has gone off in a bus, or at least a bus, the top of a bus, has exploded. I think that was the real indication that this was an explosion or a series of explosions, although that, of course, came an hour after the tube blast, whatever they were, because at that stage, we still weren't sure. It was described to most of us as a power surge. So my journey continued. Victoria Station was shut. Again, alarm bells were ringing. That was unusual. I got diverted to Cannon Street Station.

5:12I remember that there were people who were talking about staying on the train because

5:17Martin Brunt:by then, and it must have been gone 10 o 'clock, there was this sense that London was under siege. There was no confirmation that this was a terrorist attack. That came an hour or so later, but I think people were already beginning to get a sense that something extraordinary was happening and it wasn't very good. So I had to walk to Scotland Yard two and a half miles in the drizzle. The buses and the tubes by that time were all suspended, couldn't find a taxi. And I eventually got to Scotland Yard. My mobile phone had packed up. 10 past 11, everybody's phone died because the system was overloaded.

5:57Martin Brunt:I plugged into the live camera at Scotland Yard and more or less stayed there for three weeks. Talk to us about what did eventually become apparent on that day, the four separate bombings, three on the tube, one on a bus in Tavistock Square, outside the British Medical Association building of all places. What did we end up knowing about the events of the day? Bombers had travelled to London, they'd got off at King's Cross and gone in different directions. And at 8.49, they all triggered their bombs, one at Russell Square, one at all gates and the other one at edgeware road and they were kind of mid tunnel when those bombs went off and there was some confusion at the start that there were five explosions because at all gates passengers survivors got off stumbled out of the debris and they went in two different directions and some of them came up at all gate station some came up at liverpool street station so there they thought there were two blasts not the one and the same at russell square the bomb went off mid-tunnel so that confusion over five explosions on the tube persisted for a couple of hours and then an hour after they went off the bus bomb went off at tavistock square i didn't go to any of the bomb scenes but i very vividly remember the first footage and it was from our helicopter hovering over all gate station and what you saw were fleets of emergency vehicles people being stretched out um we didn't know whether they were dead or alive but i suppose the most vivid image was of the walking wounded stumbling out in the daze, their faces streaked with soot, coughing because of the smoke, some of them bloodied.

7:55Martin Brunt:Some of them, of course, already had been treated by emergency staff and were showing bandages and all sorts of other medical appliances. And of course, there was more than one person who had been fitted with an emergency mask because of burns. London wasn't any stranger to bombings. It had experienced those hands of the IRA, mortar attacks as well on 10 Downing Street. How did you become aware that this was different this time? And what was your reaction to that? Although this was a terrible shock, it wasn't really a surprise because my mind went back immediately to four years earlier in the days after the 9-11 attacks in the United States.

8:42Martin Brunt:And I'd attended a meeting of the Metropolitan Police Authority. And within a few days of 9-11, Sir John Stevens, who was then the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, stood up and told the authority members, make no mistake, we're next. Now, it took four years, but when it slowly dawned that this was a terror attack, I think a lot of people probably weren't surprised. We had got used to platform tannoy announcements and signs and messages on the trains to be very wary of abandoned packages or anybody acting suspiciously. So it's now mid-afternoon on the 7th of July 2005. five. What's the state of play as the day is developed?

9:28Martin Brunt:Just before midday, Sir Ian Blair, the commissioner, went on a tour of TV stations. And he was still saying that there were thought to be five explosions on the tube. That still hadn't been rectified. But he said that London had probably suffered a major terrorist attack. There was no official death toll early on. And I remember doing a live report from Scotland Yard around lunchtime saying that my sources were telling me that as many as 40 people had probably lost their lives. And that figure was likely to go up because there were people still trapped, particularly in the tube trains. And Martin, it ultimately ended up being 52 dead, over 770 injured.

10:15But the horror didn't end there, did it? Two weeks later, another bomb plot along the same lines was attempted, but ultimately, thankfully, failed.

10:25Martin Brunt:Yes. I mean, it was 7-7 all over again, but without the carnage. I was still reporting from Scotland Yard because there was an awful lot of coverage of the ongoing police investigation. Because although by then it had been established that these were suicide bombers, the first in the UK, and they were dead, the police were convinced that there were others who may have encouraged them or helped them or perhaps provided information about building bombs three bombs were triggered at least but didn't go off properly on the tube network and another bomb similarly was triggered on a double-decker bus but that too didn't go off and what appeared to have happened was that the detonators had fired but they'd failed to set off the bombs.

11:15And that then triggers a manhunt, a manhunt that goes international and a manhunt that also brings into play potentially one of the darkest points in the Met's history.

11:26Martin Brunt:Yes. I mean, there was absolute fear that there were four bombers who had escaped after their bombs failed to ignite and were somewhere on the run and police from all over the country were drafted in to find at least four suspects. And then the news came. I remember it very vividly. I was standing outside Scotland Yard on the 22nd of July, the day after these failed bombings. And I got a phone call from a freelance reporter told me, have you heard the news? They've shot one of the suicide bombers at Stockwell tube station. Anyway, within a few minutes, a police officer I knew walked past behind me outside Scotland Yard and almost without breaking his step whispered to me a rather loud whisper we've shot one of the bombers at Stockwell and of course within 24 hours perhaps less it had been established that he wasn't a bomber very tragically he'd been mistaken for one of those bombers had been followed to the tube there was some misinformation put out by Scotland Yard about the way he behaved, which contributed to that being a very dark day for Scotland Yard.

12:40Martin Brunt:They told us that it was an electrician, a 27-year-old man called Jean-Charles de Menezes, a Brazilian man who was living in London. And the surveillance team had identified him as one of the failed bombers, but they were terribly wrong. Massively so. And the CCTV image that came out afterwards at Stockwell tube station showed that he wasn't running, that he didn't jump the barriers, that all of the misinformation that existed in those immediate few hours turned out to be inaccurate. Yes. I mean, you can imagine how within the Met things went from euphoria to this realization that they'd made this dreadful mistake.

13:20Martin Brunt:And Sir Ian Blair said that the man had been challenged by undercover officers and had refused to accede to demands. It was also said that he was wearing baggy clothing, a baggy top, which, you know, the interpretation was that he was hiding a bomb under that. The other bit that was wrong, terribly wrong, was that he'd vaulted the barrier at the tube station and again implying that he was running away from those who were trying to stop him. In fact, I think witnesses later said it was one of the police officers who had vaulted the barrier to go down inside the tube. And of course, once they got down there, they were out of radio contact.

14:10Martin Brunt:They were convinced that this was one of the bombers. And as soon as they corralled him on the tube carriage, they shot him. He was shot a number of times in the head. I mean, you can only imagine the horrific scene of that sort of execution, I suppose. Sir Jean-Charles de Menezès is dead, tragically killed at Stockwell Tube Station, the mural still on the side of the building to this day in his legacy. And what comes next is the renewed manhunt. And it takes the Met internationally across the UK and also to what turned to be a dramatic siege. one of the bombers was arrested in Birmingham on the 27th of July he had escaped London dressed in a burka on the 29th another of the bombers was arrested in Italy in Rome and then that left two who the police had identified and discovered that they were in a flat in northwest London And I remember we had a call to Sky News from a woman who had a flat opposite where these two bombers were thought to be holed up.

15:19Martin Brunt:And she described the massive police operation beginning fleets and fleets of police cars and ambulances and people being evacuated from that same building. The police went in and got into the flat and the two men were holed up within the flat and there was a standoff for a couple of hours. And eventually the two men gave themselves up. They'd taken their tops off to show that they hadn't got any explosives. Their hands were in the air to show they weren't wearing any weapons. Within 48 hours, they had captured all of those suspects. Martin, it's 20 years since that tragic day. How have the events of 7-7 shaped and changed the UK?

16:06Martin Brunt:Well, I mean, it's been irrevocably changed because we all now live in fear of more attacks. I think the current threat level of terror is that an attack is likely at any time. There have been a number of other attacks by similarly motivated people, motivated by a hatred of the West. and we've had stabbings on London Bridge. We've had people moan down on Westminster Bridge. One of the biggest, of course, was the bomb blast at the Manchester Arena. There have been other terror attacks by right-wingers, extreme right-wing ideologists, of course. Britain has changed. We now have a counter-terror network across the UK with hubs in all of the regions.

16:57Martin Brunt:We also had very quickly new counter-terror laws brought in remember tony blair the prime minister at the time said the rules of the game are changing and within a year there was new legislation a new terrorism act we've had the prevent system introduced by the government where people are encouraged to identify young people particularly who are in danger of being radicalized and efforts are then made to de-radicalise them. What impact did the July of 2005 have on the security services? In the wake of 7-7, it was established that two of the 7-7 bombers, Shehzad Tamwir and Bahamud Sadiq Khan, had come on the radar in a very peripheral way of MI5.

17:47Martin Brunt:They'd been associating with another group of bomb plotters who were planning to create a fertilizer bomb and blow up the Blue Water Shopping Center in Kent and the Ministry of Sound nightclub in South London. That was a plot that was thwarted and they went on trial in 2006. But when MI5 went back and looked through their surveillance logs, they realized that two of those 7.7 bombers had been seen in connection and associating with with those bombers now there was a report a year after 77 by the intelligence and security committee which more or less concluded that 77 couldn't have been avoided but lessons could be learned from the fact that these two had come within mi5's radar mi5 in its defense said that there was nothing that these two were doing or saying that led them to believe that they too were plotting some kind of attack.

18:56Martin Brunt:And the MI5 mantra at the time, and I've often heard it since, is that there were not intelligence misses, but there were intelligence gaps. I interviewed a passenger who was about seven, eight feet away from one of the bombs when they went off. And he told me even 20 years on, he's not told therapists the full details of what he saw, what he smelt, what he felt, what he heard. He said he needed to protect them. But the interest continues to be there. I mean, I'm a crime reporter, and I understand that people are fascinated by true crime. And I think a lot of it is to do with people are interested in where particularly violent crime happens and this is a prime example of it because they need to kind of understand how it happens and why it happens so that they can tailor their life to try and avoid getting caught up in something like that themselves.

19:55Martin Brunt:I do think it's important that these things are commemorated in a way not every anniversary but 20 years on you know when even I can't remember some of the details about what happened. I think it's important to remember those who died, to remember those who are injured, and some of them appallingly injured, you know, and remarkable that they survived at all. And also to pay tribute to the emergency workers. I mean, there are still today incredible tales of heroics, people who went in not just to help one person, but stayed there and helped others. People didn't know at that stage that there weren't going to be more bombs.

20:39Martin Brunt:I mean, just incredible tales that I think it's important to dwell on on an occasion like this. Plenty more of Martin's insight and analysis available via the Sky News app and the Sky News website. The Daily is back tomorrow.