With some fanfare in the weeks since the London bombings, the British authorities have quickly detained the main surviving suspects and, just as rapidly, embarked on a high-profile campaign to expel prominent foreign-born Islamic figures as part of promised measures against extremism.
But the investigation into the lethal July 7 attacks and the failed July 21 attacks seems to have undergone some less-publicized changes that have left important questions -- in public at least -- unanswered. Some leads, once hotly pursued, have fizzled out. Others have proved to be blind alleys.
Investigators now doubt their early estimation that the two groups of attackers had an organizational link to al-Qaeda, a senior British police official said, though the attackers might have taken their inspiration from it.
Nor have investigators identified any outside mastermind, or any evidence of an operational link between the groups of attackers.
Initially, Ian Blair, commissioner of London's Metropolitan Police, said the July 21 attacks had some "resonance" with the earlier bombing: Both attacks made targets of three subway trains and a bus; both involved young Muslim men with bulky bags or backpacks laden with homemade explosives capable, in his words, of wreaking "carnage."
Since then, comparisons of the two sets of attackers have become more nuanced. The groups differed in makeup. Three of the four July 7 bombers, who died with their 52 victims in subways and on a double-decker bus in London, were concentrated near Leeds in the north and were of Pakistani descent. The July 21 group, whose four bombs failed to go off in the London transit system, came from disparate areas, north, south and west of the city, and several of them were of African descent, from Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea.
One of the suspects in the July 21 attacks, Hussain Osman, who is also known as Hamdi Issac and who fled to Italy, is an Ethiopian-born father of three who told investigators in Rome that their attacks were "copycat" attacks designed to frighten, but not kill, Britons, according to his court-appointed lawyer, Antoinette Sonnessa.
Still, investigators have not ruled out the possibility that the groups were linked, said diplomats in London, as well as European and US law enforcement officials.
Philosophically, both groups seemed driven by a reverence for Osama bin Laden.
Two weeks ago, the investigators thought they had identified a third cell, of six or seven men, that was preparing for another attack. But in recent interviews, two senior diplomats in London who are kept informed of the investigation and an American official said investigators had concluded that the intelligence was faulty.
The investigation is entering a more difficult, grinding phase. Three of the four main suspects in the July 21 attack have been charged, which means that their interrogations have effectively ended, and that the police are legally severely limited in what they can say publicly about the case.
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