HOWZAT

Khan’s parents said their son may have been brainwashed into launching the attack. “We are devastated that our son may have been brainwashed into carrying out such an atrocity, since we know him as a kind and caring member of our family,” they said.

In the statement issued through West Yorkshire police they apologised to the victims’ relatives: “The Khan family would like to sincerely express their deepest and heartfelt sympathies to all the innocent victims and their families and friends affected by this horrific and evil act.”

This weekend British and American intelligence were at odds over a second possible intelligence failure. American officials claim Germaine Lindsay, a second London bomber, was on a terrorist watchlist and that MI5 failed to monitor him.

Lindsay, a 19-year-old Jamaican-born convert to Islam, blew himself up on a Tube train just after it left King’s Cross station on the way to Russell Square. At least 26 other people were killed. Like Hasib Hussain, 18, who blew himself up on a bus in Tavistock Square, and Shahzad Tanweer, 22, who exploded his device at Aldgate, Lindsay was carrying a rucksack bomb with about 10lb of home-made high explosives.

Bomb disposal experts found another nine bombs in Lindsay’s red Fiat, which had been left in the car park at Luton railway station. The CCTV image released by Scotland Yard yesterday showed the four bombers carrying rucksacks as they entered Luton station at 7.21am on Thursday, July 7.

Intelligence has connected Lindsay to a “bomb factory” in Beeston, Leeds, where the terror cell and its “chemist” are believed to have stored materials to make bombs.

Reports in the American media yesterday linked him to previous terrorist-related inquiries in the United States.

One report, since denied by Whitehall officials, said Lindsay had been placed under FBI surveillance when he visited America four years ago.

“He was on the radar, then he was off the radar,” an American official said.

Some US officials claimed Lindsay had also featured in the London truck-bomb plot to which Khan was indirectly linked. The British authorities yesterday said they were not aware of any such intelligence.

A Home Office official said he believed the Americans had confused Lindsay with another man with a similar name. “They may have got the wrong end of the stick. But we are following it up because the Americans have plastered it everywhere,” he said.

Yesterday Lindsay’s family spoke of their horror at his crime. Samantha Lewthwaite, his wife, said she had “never predicted or imagined that he was involved in such horrific activities”, adding: “He was a loving husband and father.”

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