BRITAIN: Police have released the first CCTV image of the four suspected London suicide bombers setting off from Luton on a Thameslink service to King's Cross station.
They have also confirmed their identities for the first time, formally naming them as Mohammad Sidique Khan (30), Shehzad Tanweer (22), Hasib Mir Hussain (18) and Germaine Lindsay (19). The image was released on Saturday as part of the police attempt to obtain more information about their final movements in the hour and a half before their attack on London's transport network.
The head of Scotland Yard's Anti-Terrorist Branch, Peter Clarke, said they were grateful for the public response to previous appeals for information on the bombings. He added: "We still need to find out more about these four men and their movements, both on the morning of the bombings and in the days and weeks beforehand."
It is not known if police have yet found footage identifying the fifth man sought, believed to the bombers' controller.
Shadow home secretary David Davis said the publication of the photograph of the four men carrying rucksacks "crystallises it for everybody, I suspect, and brings the sense of horror back again". Speaking on the BBC, he said: "Four young men, probably four pawns of al-Qaeda, used to achieve one of the most evil acts that has happened in our capital for a very long time."
Mr Davis's comment came after weekend reports that police - who have not publicly described the four suspects as "suicide bombers" - were still investigating the possibility that they might have been duped by their controllers into thinking that timing devices would allow them to escape the bomb wreckage.
As the London death toll rose to 55, police were given extra time to question a man arrested last week under the Terrorism Act on suspicion of the commission, instigation or preparation of acts of terrorism. At least 10 addresses in West Yorkshire and one in Buckinghamshire have been searched, with seven of the Yorkshire searches continuing.
The wreckage of the bombed Number 30 bus was moved from Tavistock Square on Saturday for further forensic examination.
Mohammed Sidique Khan, who police believe to have been responsible for the explosion on the tube at Edgeware Road, was assessed by MI5 last year but was not deemed a threat to national security, according to yesterday's Sunday Times.
The paper said Khan's name came up during a 2004 investigation into an alleged plot to explode a truck bomb outside a crowded Soho club. However, because MI5 officers apparently decided that he was "on the periphery" and was only indirectly linked to one of the suspected plotters, Khan was not placed under surveillance.
Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee will look at any intelligence failures in the run-up to the London bombings. It was confirmed on Friday that an al-Qaeda suspect entered Britain a fortnight before the London bombings and was not placed under surveillance. Questions about resources for Britain's security services are expected to feature in Prime Minister Tony Blair's summit with police and security chiefs on Thursday.