They lie to you: the bogus home affairs committee inquiry

The fourth anniversary of the explosions in London on July 7th 2005 was marked by the announcement in the media of an inquiry into those events by the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee.

The Evening Standard had the headline "MI6 chiefs to face tough inquiry over 7/7 attacks" and explained:

The most far-ranging parliamentary inquiry into the 7 July bombings and other terrorist incidents in Britain was launched by MPs today.

MI5 and MI6 chiefs, as well as terrorism experts, will be asked to give evidence to the Commons home affairs committee.

The inquiry will re-examine what security services knew before 7/7, what should have been done and the Government's response — including the emergency Cobra committee.

MPs will assess any “common threads” between 7 July, the failed bombings on 21 July and other terrorist incidents. These include the Crevice case, which saw five men jailed for life for an al Qaeda-linked bomb plot whose targets included a nightclub and shopping centre. Some of the Crevice plotters met two of the 7 July suicide bombers. The inquiry will re-open questions over the report by the intelligence and security committee, which cleared MI5 and the police of blame for 7/7, despite new evidence revealing their knowledge of some of the bombers.

The Telegraph carried direct quotations from senior members of the committee:

Patrick Mercer, a Tory member of the committee, said: "This will be the biggest inquiry in July 7 and terrorist incidents in Britain.

"What we are going to try is to look at the links between failed attacks before 7/7 and right the way through to the latest successful and unsuccessful attacks that have been plaguing our security services."

Keith Vaz, the Labour chairman of the committee, added: "The Committee will be inviting MI5, MI6 and terrorism experts to give evidence with the aim of gaining a detailed picture of what the security services knew before 7/7, what, if anything, could have been done to prevent the attacks and the Government's response to the attacks."

Rachel "North", who coincidentally is "always ending up on things with the nice Patrick Mercer", applied her cross media marketing expertise to the announcement, declaring that "The campaigning is working. Another major breakthrough.". Despite closing that blog post with the words "More soon", nothing has been heard from her since on the subject.

So what became of the biggest inquiry into 7/7 that would assess common threads between 7 July, 21 July and other terrorist incidents including the Crevice case?

According to the clerk to the committee:

"Unfortunately, these press reports were misleading. The Committee had decided to hold an inquiry into counter-terrorism but had not then decided on its terms of reference. It has subsequently published its terms of reference, which focus on the Home Office's response to terrorist attacks. It does not intend to launch any other inquiries in this area before the end of this Parliament."

In other words, Keith Vaz and Patrick Mercer cynically exploited the unveiling of the memorial to victims of July 7th by pretending to launch a far-ranging inquiry into those events, giving the misleading impression that parliament would be investigating them.

Patrick Mercer ("a compassionate, thoughtful, principled man" according to Rachel "North") is no stranger to manipulating the media when it comes to "Islamic terror" stories. Bloggerheads has documented Mercer's close links to Glen Jenvey and Vigil, following Jenvey's exposure as a false flag "Islamic extremist" in January 2009.

(J7, by the way, picked up on Jenvey and his entrapment affiliates back in November 2006).