Iraq War a factor in 2005 London bombings: Ex-counterterror chief
Neil Basu's remarks were made to The Guardian ahead of the 20th anniversary of the attacks, which were carried out by Islamist extremists and left 52 people dead and more than 750 injured.
British foreign policy has a direct effect on domestic security, said Basu, adding that one driver of the attacks was 'foreign policy and Iraq,' referring to Britain's central role in the conflict alongside the US.
'That does not excuse in any way what they did. That foreign policy decision has radicalized and made extremists of people who might not have been radicalized or extreme,' he said.
In the wake of the attacks, the shock in Britain was compounded by the revelation that the group of suicide bombers had been supported by Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda terror group.
'All terrorists will have a freedom fighter story,' Basu said: 'Bin Laden would have had a freedom fighter story. We might think it's crap. We might think it's self-justification, but he will have had a story about liberating his lands from the great invaders.'
The ringleader of the attacks was Mohammed Sidique Khan. The husband and father said in a self-recorded video before his death by suicide: 'We are at war and I am a soldier. Now you, too, will taste the reality of this situation.'
Basu warned that the new threat level to the UK from terrorism is far higher than in 2005. 'There is no one path for any single individual to go down a terrorist route. There's a multiplicity of paths, and one of them is: 'I'm right, you're wrong.' Now that looks obscene to us … they are on God's side. We are on Satan's side,' he said.
'When terrorists hide behind a religion to commit an atrocity, people blame every follower of the religion and the religion itself. We ought to stop doing that.'
As a result of that behavior on a national scale, people in Britain are suspicious of those who 'don't look like you, think like you, eat like you, worship like you,' Basu said.
'That has got worse, not better, and that has been caused exactly as terrorists want, by dividing a society by committing the shocking act.'
The attacks also led to a reversal of decades of progress in race and religious relations, Basu said, highlighting a surging suspicion of Muslims in Britain in the decades since.
The 'trajectory of tolerance' seen in the UK since the 1980s has been wiped out, he added, citing the July 7 bombings and 9/11 attacks in the US as crucial factors.
'That's what I think has been most soul-destroying … It has interrupted a trajectory of tolerance that I was becoming very familiar and happy with,' Basu said.
'It started with 9/11 … 7/7 accelerated that in this country. The relationship between races is worse today, or as bad today as it was in the 70s and 80s. That period of tolerance is over, and feels very much over.'
For Muslims in Britain, the events of that decade led to wider damage within the community as members risked being tarred with suspicion by the public, Basu said.
A cycle of hatred and intolerance had been set in motion as a result, he added, warning of surging right-wing extremism and racism.
'I look at the rise of extreme right-wing terrorism in this country … of right-wing, racist attitudes toward black and brown people, and I look at the rise in hate crime reporting … and can't help but think we've got a vicious cycle that started when certain vicious groups started killing people on western soil. I think they were intending to do that, and they have succeeded,' he said.
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