7/7: The Inside Story – The Voices of Londonistan • Episode 2

CONFLICTED

Message Heard

History, Religion & Spirituality

4.7 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 17 September 2025

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Conflicted: 7/7 The Inside Story is now live to all our dear listeners! Episodes 1 & 2 are available from today, with the following episodes of this 6 part series on the terror attacks which changed the face of modern Britain coming every week... -- Four years before 7/7, there was 9/11. The attacks on New York's World Trade Center utterly changed the world and counter terrorism was conducted in the modern age. It left the question: could a similar attack happen in London/ In this second episode, host Thomas Small invites academics to trace the origins of British jihadism, showing how London earned its moniker, "Londonistan" through the 1990s, with dissidents from across the Arab world radicalising young people through events like the Rushdie affair and the return of fighters from Afghanistan. But you’ll also hear from the UK’s top counter terrorism officials about how the UK counter terrorism establishment responded to this. What were the biggest attacks they foiled before the cataclysm of 7/7? And why did they not see an attack on the London Underground coming? Conflicted - 7/7 The Inside Story is produced by Message Heard for Wondery. Hosted by Thomas Small. This series was written and produced by Harry Stott and Leo Danczak. Production Coordinator is Kirsty McLean. Sound design and engineering by Alan Leer, Ivan Eastley and Lizzy Andrews. Music by Tom Biddle. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	On Tuesday, September 11th of 2001, I was in London for a debriefing session,
0:12.0	and so I remember that after I finished that debriefing session, I went to Oxford Street.
0:18.0	I saw lots of people congregating outside looking at the TV screens.
0:25.6	And I was wondering what was going on.
0:29.6	September 11, 2001, another day, like 7-7, known purely by its date, 9-11. Planes hijacked by terrorists from the jihadist group Al-Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden,
0:43.3	were flown straight into the World Trade Center in New York, the symbolic heart of America's global economic dominance.
0:51.3	9-11 remains the world's single deadliest terrorist attack,
0:57.0	killing nearly 3,000 civilians.
1:00.1	And so when I saw the whole thing unfolding,
1:03.3	I realized that this is exactly what I was told about
1:07.2	just 94 days earlier.
1:11.6	Three months before the attack in June 2001,
1:15.6	Eamon Dean, an ex-jihadist turned MI6 double agent inside Al-Qaeda,
1:20.6	was in Afghanistan.
1:22.6	There, he received an unexpected summons
1:25.6	to a meeting with al-Qaeda's military chief, Abu Hafts al-Masri.
1:30.3	The veteran jihadist gave Amon an instruction, which alerted the spy that something big was in the works.
1:37.0	It was surreal. Three months earlier, I came back from Afghanistan, and I then debriefed my handlers at both my 5 and in my 6th
1:48.8	that something is definitely being planned by Al-Qaeda and that might take place sometime after
1:58.3	the end of August based on the mission and the information that I was given at that time.
2:04.3	And I was told explicitly not to come back to Afghanistan, come what may,
2:09.9	and that should a big event happen somewhere around the world,
	...

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