British police are considering the possibility that the four key suspects in last week's London attacks may have been tricked into setting off their bombs, a British newspaper reported yesterday.
"We do not have hard evidence that the men were suicide bombers," a Scotland Yard spokesman told the Sunday Telegraph. "It is possible that they did not intend to die."
According to the paper, one police hypothesis is that the bombers were tricked by a "master" who told them they would have time to escape -- when in fact the devices were set to go off immediately.
"The bombers' masters might have thought that they couldn't risk the four men being caught and spilling everything to British interrogators," an unnamed security official told the Telegraph.
Lending weight to the theory is the fact that all four men had paid up their parking tickets before boarding a train at Luton for King's Cross, and that they all bought return tickets to the capital.
Moreover, the paper said, the men were carrying their explosives inside rucksacks, as opposed to strapped to their bodies as is common practice among suicide bombers.
None were reported to have cried "Allah Akbar" (God is Great) before setting off their charge -- something which most Middle Eastern suicide bombers do.
"It is possible they were duped into believing there would be a delay, but what we know is that they carried bombs onto Tubes and a bus and set them off, killing themselves and innocent people," one senior officer told the paper.
"But we are keeping an open mind until we have firm evidence one way or another," said the officer.
Police have based their theory that the attacks were suicide bombings largely around the fact that all four suspects died in the attacks.
The fact that one of the bombers was decapitated -- a common occurrence among suicide bombers -- is also seen as supporting the theory, as well as the fact that investigators discovered no timer devices.
Sir Ian Blair, the head of London's Metropolitan Police, said on Thursday that the attacks had been suicide bombings.
"They went onto those Tubes or bus to kill, and presumably accepted they would be killed," he said, adding: "You don't need to be a suicide bomber in a liberal democracy. They've chosen to be."
Tropical Storm Gaemi strengthened into a typhoon at 2pm yesterday, and could make landfall in Yilan County tomorrow, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. The agency was scheduled to issue a sea warning at 11:30pm yesterday, and could issue a land warning later today. Gaemi was moving north-northwest at 4kph, carrying maximum sustained winds near its center of up to 118.8kph and gusts of 154.8kph. The circumference is forecast to reach eastern Taiwan tomorrow morning, with the center making landfall in Yilan County later that night before departing from the north coast, CWA weather forecaster Kuan Shin-ping (官欣平) said yesterday. Uncertainty remains and
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