Was Parliament on bombers' hit list too?

by GORDON RAYNER,
Daily Mail 08:31am 16th July 2005

Suicide bomber Mohammad Sidique Khan was given a guided tour of the House of Commons last year - raising the disturbing prospect that Parliament was on the hit list of targets.

Khan, 30, was a guest of Labour MP Jon Trickett, whose wife Sarah is head of a school where the bomber taught.

During the visit in July he also met International Development Minister Hilary Benn, whose constituency includes the school, and was shown areas of Parliament which are off-limits to unaccompanied members of the public.

They included Portcullis House, the new extension where many MPs have their offices and where security has been exposed as worryingly lax in recent years.

'Disturbing'

News of Khan's visit raised alarm bells in Parliament, which was already on a state of high alert after the bombings.

Detectives believe at least one other member of the terror cell which carried out the suicide attacks is still at large.

Khan raised no suspicions when he went to the Commons because he had no criminal record and was at that time regarded as a trusted member of staff at Hillside Primary School in Leeds, where he was a 'learning mentor' to immigrant children.

Mr Trickett, MP for Hemsworth in Leeds, said: "Every year a group of kids from the school comes down to London. They go on the London Eye and then I normally meet them in the Houses of Parliament.

"They came in and we had a sandwich in Portcullis House. Khan was one of the group and I met him. Khan has been known to my family for more than 17 years because he went to the same school as my children.

"My wife came home to me one day and said he had got a job as a teaching assistant and how good it was that he had managed to do so well for himself."

Guest at MP's home

Mr Trickett said Khan had also been a guest at his home.

"It is profoundly disturbing to discover that a person who appeared to care so deeply for the children at that time should so callously take the lives of others only a year later.'

The Labour Party said Khan's group had been fully screened by the House of Commons Security system and was accompanied at all times throughout the visit.

MPs who until now have tried to show a united front against terrorism are beginning to ask searching questions about Government policy.

Clare Short, one of Tony Blair's fiercest Labour critics, has blamed British foreign policy and the Iraq war for the attacks that killed more than 50.

And a group of Labour MPs led by former minister Frank Field has called for Muslims who travel from Britain to attend training camps in Afghanistan to be barred from coming back.

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