THE
FIRST of the two car bombs exploded outside the Israeli Embassy in Kensington,
west London, on the afternoon of 26 July 1994. The second exploded later, just
after midnight, outside Balfour House, the headquarters of many Zionist organisations,
in Finchley, north London.
Fourteen people were injured by the embassy explosion and five by the explosion
at Balfour House. £1.5 million worth of damage was caused to the buildings.
Incredibly, no one was killed by either bombing.
On that afternoon in Kensington, a woman drove an Audi into Kensington Palace
Green, parked outside the Israeli Embassy, and persuaded PC Duncan, a fully
armed Officer of the Diplomatic Protection Corp, to let her leave it parked
while she went around the corner for some cigarettes. After she had gone, the
car exploded.
Kensington Palace Green is a high security private road that is patrolled by
armed police. It houses a number of other embassies and includes the private
residences of, among others, the Sultan of Brunei. However, according to the
Israelis, the security cameras on the sides of the Israeli Embassy building
did not contain any film, and so there is no camera footage of that bombing
or the bomber(s). Because of the conflicting accounts given by the Israeli and
British guards on duty, there is considerable confusion as to which direction
the Audi came from, how many people were inside and what they looked like. The
only description that exists is that the driver was a woman, middle-aged, of
Middle Eastern appearance and carrying a Harrods shopping bag.
There were no witnesses to the bombing at Balfour House. However, the day before
the explosion, a local resident saw some men, whom she describes as of Middle
Eastern origin, parked in two cars outside the building. They were blocking
her driveway and so she asked them to move, and they sped away. She reported
this incident several times, before and after the bomb exploded there that night,
but that car and those men were never traced by the police. More curious still
is the fact that the security, a police presence, was actually taken off Balfour
House that day, an hour before the explosion.
Both bombs exploded without leaving any traces behind. Nothing is known about
what explosive was used or how the explosions were triggered. As the judge said,
"We do not know what the explosive was...There were no residues, and that indicated
a high performance explosive. There was no trace of any timing or remote control
device or of any detonator or other initiating process."
Letters claiming responsibility for the bombings, written in Arabic, were posted
on the afternoon of 26 July to the London offices of two Arab newspapers,
Al-Quds and Al-Hayat, and to the London offices of the PLO. These
letters were signed by the 'Jaffa Unit' or 'Jaffa Team' of the 'Palestinian
Resistance', an unknown organisation that has never been heard from before or
since.
Every Palestinian opposition group and every Muslim organisation in Lebanon
has denied any role in the explosions. The language in the claim letter is unusual,
lacks the clarity of virtually all other similar claims and contains views directly
contrary to those of all the defendants. And neither the letters nor the envelopes
contained any the defendants' fingerprints. As the judge summed up, "There is
nothing in the type to link [the claim letters] to any of the defendants nor,
indeed, in the paper or copying or anything."
