Analyzing the latest London attacks

Two weeks after terrorist bombings killed more than 50 people in London, Thursday’s incidents in Great Britain create several questions regarding the relationship between the two attacks. MSNBC terrorism analyst Evan Coleman joined NBC’s Brian Williams on Thursday to discuss the possibilities of a copycat bombing attack in London.

“Certainly there are a lot of people around the world that would have reason to take advantage of the media hoopla from 7/7 and try to capitalize on it for their own reasons.” Kohlmann said.

Based on the initial evidence, Thursday’s attacks were not as meticulously planned as those on 7/7 “The people that carried out this attack were not at the same degree of technical proficiency as those that carried out the attacks on 7/7,” Kohlmann said.

“Another things that’s curious here is the targets, again the same three targets, you have the London Underground, and also a bus, and it’s curious because we’re still not sure why the 7/7 bombers seemed to strike a bus as well as the three Underground lines,”
Kohlmann added.

“I think that if this had been a real organized terrorist event, organized in the same way as 7/7, you would have had suicide bombers, people would not have thrown bags of explosives into buses or into subways, and then run away, that’s not the M.O. of the 7/7 bombers,” he said.

However, according to Kohlmann, nothing can be ruled out.

“Of course it would be attractive to think that this is a copycat attack, and it may be, but we have to keep in mind as well that just because al-Qaida has been successful in the past, doesn’t mean that these same terrorist groups haven’t made mistakes.”

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