Whitewater rafting trips popular with corporate executives seeking team-building skills may have been used by London suicide bombers for just that purpose -- a fact that has led investigators to this Welsh town.
Since photographs appeared showing at least two of the July 7 bombers shooting the rapids here -- with one flashing a victory or peace sign -- residents of this playground for rafters and fishermen have been coming to grips with the fact there may have been terrorists in their midst.
Now, investigators are following up clues that the second wave of attackers who unsuccessfully tried to strike two weeks later had links to this same small town.
"They were up here for a bonding weekend to prostrate themselves over their bombs before they died," said innkeeper Richard Fullard, 62.
A restaurant operator in town, Ceri Williams, 55, said the pictures made her realize, "there are extremists everywhere."
Suspected suicide bombers Mohammed Sidique Khan and Shahzad Tanweer rode the rapids in a morning session at the Canolfan Tryweryn National Whitewater Center about a month before detonating explosives on the London subways in attacks that killed 55, including the four bombers.
The revelations have caused many to scratch their heads in this town of 2,000 -- a place where people take part in sheepherding contests and where the Celtic tones of Welsh are heard.
The town is also known for the gwyniad, a prehistoric fish.
But that was before a June 4 rafting trip on the Tryweryn River in Snowdonia National Park gave this town another claim to fame. Many found it chilling that the bombers would go looking for a good time only weeks before what appeared to be a deadly mission.
Some terrorism experts, like Bruce Hoffman of the Rand Corp, said the trip might have been a business-like exercise in team-building -- an effort to help the group coalesce.
In particular, he noted that the London attacks occurred almost simultaneously -- a factor which alone takes discipline and team effort.
"The business parallel explains a lot," Hoffman said. "Why not a corporate-building exercise like whitewater rafting?"
Magnus Ranstorp, at the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, recalled that several of the attackers who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks in the US visited Las Vegas in the weeks before flying passenger jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
"Some had been drinking and carrying out, how shall I say it, `un-Islamic behavior,'" he said. "It's almost like a right to do something you wouldn't otherwise do before you depart."
A Canolyn Tryweryn official, Jon Gorman, said neither he nor anyone else remembered Khan and Tanweer as hundreds of rafters of all ethnic groups use the center daily.
Many visitors are "young lads" looking for adventure -- "that doesn't make it an al-Qaeda training center," he said.
Gorman said police asked him not to discuss whether the boat on which Khan and Tanweer rode the rapids was comprised of people in a single group.
He also declined to reveal who else was on the excursion, saying that he gave that information to the police after reviewing forms rafters sign giving emergency contact information.
Each trip costs ?280 (US$490), which Gorman said is usually split by up to six or seven people on the boat, who travel with one instructor. Police have photographs of 18 men who booked three sessions on that day, another official at the center said.
Police have refused to comment on reports that a brochure from the center was found in an explosives-laden backpack that failed to detonate on a bus on July 21.
But police have been combing the town to try to find out more, searching for anyone who might have known the bombers. They've asked to see the guest registers at some local inns for the weekend of June 4.
One hostel owner, Stella Shaw, said police were interested in six "Muslim" guests she had at her hostel on the night of June 6, but said she did not house either Khan nor Tanweer.
And Fullard said the police came and looked at his books for that weekend as well -- even though he says he wouldn't take in a group of single men. But few in the town seem concerned that they are in any danger.
If anything, many seemed defiant and unconcerned that anyone would associate Bala with the bombers.
"They've been and gone," said John Williams, 61, as his wife bustled about to take care of the lunch customers, "and they're not likely to come back anymore."
Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, alias “Fito,” was Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive before his arrest on Wednesday, more than a year after he escaped prison from where he commanded the country’s leading criminal gang. The former taxi driver turned crime boss became the prime target of law enforcement early last year after escaping from a prison in the southwestern port of Guayaquil. Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa’s government released “wanted” posters with images of his face and offered US$1 million for information leading to his capture. In a country plagued by crime, members of Fito’s gang, Los Choneros, have responded with violence, using car
Two former Chilean ministers are among four candidates competing this weekend for the presidential nomination of the left ahead of November elections dominated by rising levels of violent crime. More than 15 million voters are eligible to choose today between former minister of labor Jeannette Jara, former minister of the interior Carolina Toha and two members of parliament, Gonzalo Winter and Jaime Mulet, to represent the left against a resurgent right. The primary is open to members of the parties within Chilean President Gabriel Boric’s ruling left-wing coalition and other voters who are not affiliated with specific parties. A recent poll by the
TENSIONS HIGH: For more than half a year, students have organized protests around the country, while the Serbian presaident said they are part of a foreign plot About 140,000 protesters rallied in Belgrade, the largest turnout over the past few months, as student-led demonstrations mount pressure on the populist government to call early elections. The rally was one of the largest in more than half a year student-led actions, which began in November last year after the roof of a train station collapsed in the northern city of Novi Sad, killing 16 people — a tragedy widely blamed on entrenched corruption. On Saturday, a sea of protesters filled Belgrade’s largest square and poured into several surrounding streets. The independent protest monitor Archive of Public Gatherings estimated the
Irish-language rap group Kneecap on Saturday gave an impassioned performance for tens of thousands of fans at the Glastonbury Festival despite criticism by British politicians and a terror charge for one of the trio. Liam Og O hAnnaidh, who performs under the stage name Mo Chara, has been charged under the UK’s Terrorism Act with supporting a proscribed organization for allegedly waving a Hezbollah flag at a concert in London in November last year. The rapper, who was charged under the anglicized version of his name, Liam O’Hanna, is on unconditional bail before a further court hearing in August. “Glastonbury,
RSS