Guardian : Timeline: The 7/7 London bombings

Timeline: The 7/7 London bombings

The 7 July attacks took the conspirators repeated trips to Pakistan and Afghanistan, and years, to plan

Rachel Williams | April 28, 2009

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1999

Mohammed Shakil attends three-day militant training camp in Kashmir, where he learns to fire a gun. He describes the thrill as being "like a bungee jump".

July 2001

Mohammad Sidique Khan and Waheed Ali travel to Pakistan, where they spend a fortnight at a training camp in Kashmir before travelling into Afghanistan to a base camp a mile behind the frontline. They return to the UK a week before the September 11 attacks on the US.

July 2003

Khan and Shakil travel to Pakistan. They meet Mohammed Junaid Babar and the fertiliser bomb plotter, Omar Khyam, telling them they are on a fact-finding mission. They are persuaded to attend a training camp, however, and there they take part in firearms training using light machine guns, AK47s and rocket-propelled grenades.

February 2004

Khan, Shehzad Tanweer, Ali and Khyam meet several times in the UK and are captured on police surveillance discussing how to raise money for jihad by defrauding builders' merchants and banks.

November 2004

Khan makes home video recordings for his baby daughter, Maryam, saying goodbye before he goes to fight jihad. In one, he introduces the six-month-old to her "uncles": Tanweer, fellow 7 July bomber Hasib Hussain, and Ali. Days later, he and Tanweer fly to Pakistan. At the end of the month Khan's wife records in her diary that he may be back by February.

December 16 2004

Ali, Sadeer Saleem and Shakil drive from Leeds to London with Hussain on a trip described by the prosecution as a reconnaissance mission. They spend time in east London, where Ali, by his account, stays in the afternoon to visit his sister and her children. Saleem, Shakil and Hussain go to the Natural History Museum. They are joined in the evening by Jermaine Lindsay. All five stay the night at the Journey's Hostel, King's Cross.

December 17 2004

Lindsay leaves early in the morning; Ali, Saleem, Shakil and Hussain go on the London Eye and to the London Aquarium. They leave the city at lunchtime.

December 2004

Ali and Saleem fly from Manchester to Islamabad. They claim that while in Pakistan they spent several weeks at a training camp, where they say they were visited by Khan and Tanweer, and were told the pair were returning to the UK to "do a couple of things for the brothers".

February 2005

Khan returns to the UK; Ali and Saleem come home later in the month.

April to June 2005

Khan, Tanweer, Hussain and Lindsay are captured on CCTV visiting the second bomb factory, in Chapeltown Road, Leeds.

June 28 2005

Khan, Tanweer and Lindsay make a final reconnaissance trip to London.

July 7 2005

Khan, Tanweer, Lindsay and Hussain detonate suicide bombs on London's transport system, killing 52 people.

October 2006

"Cell site analysis" of mobile phone calls alerts police to the December 2004 trip.

March 2007

Ali and Shakil are arrested as they prepare to board a flight to Pakistan. Saleem is taken into custody at home in Leeds.