Parents' Guide to Attack on London: Hunting the 7/7 Bombers

ATTACK ON LONDON: HUNTING THE 7/7 BOMBERS is a docuseries that revisits the 2005 domestic terrorist attacks on London, England 20 years later. The four-part program reconstructs what happened on July 7 (7/7), 2005 when suicide bombs were detonated on subway trains (aka "The Tube") and on a public bus by radicalized British Muslims during morning rush hour. Along with archive news footage and blurry reenactments, survivors like Daniel Biddle and Louise Barry offer horrific details about what happened and the injuries they sustained, while victims' families talk about the loss of their loved ones. Conversations with former Prime Minister Tony Blair and Eliza Manningham-Buller, the former director general of MI5, and other members of the Security Service reveal the national concerns at the time, and how the bombings led to the biggest criminal investigation in British history to date. Their work eventually led to the capture of the four "7/21 bombers," who attempted to detonate faulty incendiary devices on public transport two weeks after the first attack. Woven throughout these narratives are conversations with community leaders like former Labour MP Shahid Malik and human rights advocate Yasmin Khan, who discuss the immediate resurgence of post-9/11 tensions and Islamophobia after the first bombings. They touch on the failure to balance national concerns about cells of radicalized British Muslim men with the discriminatory treatment of the broader British Muslim community (and people who might look like them). Finally, the series discusses how systemic racism combined with national panic and political pressure culminated in the execution-style killing of Brazilian national Jean Charles de Menezes at the hands of MI5 agents, who mistook him for one of the 7/21 suspects. The fallout from his death and the long-term impact 7/7 has had on the United Kingdom are also major themes.