London trip full of stories

Every victim of the London terrorist attacks seems to have a unique story, said one of two… Every victim of the London terrorist attacks seems to have a unique story, said one of two graduate students who did research over spring break on last summer’s bombings in London.

“Because of my experience with terrorist attacks in the Mideast, it seemed very unusual to me,” said Josh Wander, who used to work for the Jerusalem Post in Israel.

Wander mentioned a man who said that it was so crowded on the train that he had to keep picking up his briefcase from the floor, to his lap, to his chest, to eventually in front of his face. It was in front of his face when the bomb went off.

The briefcase offered some protection from the explosion. After the attack, his face was saved and the briefcase was full of shrapnel.

“Everyone in London had an unusual story about not usually taking that train, or something strange that saved them,” he added.

There was also an Israeli woman killed that day who was debating whether or not to go back to Israel because of the suicide bombings. She died in a bus bombing in London.

Wander explained that those most willing to speak about the occasion were members of a terrorist attack support group he found through the Internet. The class’ other goals were to meet with representatives of security establishments, representatives of first responders like the Red Cross, and prominent members of the London Muslim community.

All meetings that were not directly with victims were cancelled by the organizations.

“We met with a few random Muslims about how they felt about the situation, but no representatives of the community,” Wander explained.

The class, “the anatomy of the terrorist attack” led by Professor William Keller, director of the Ridgeway Center for Security Studies, focuses this year on the London and Madrid subway and bus bombings. Some students from the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs went to London to try to gain further understanding of the attacks.

Keller wants the students to understand all aspects of terrorist attacks, not just when, where and why, but the ideology behind each attack. He has done the program for three years. The goal is for the two teams of students to find out everything they can about how those involved planned the attacks, who carried them out, how the authorities reacted and how such attacks might be prevented in the future.

The Center gave a small grant to help the students travel and follow the contacts through to the end.

“I think it will really add to the education of the students and the group that they’re working with,” said Keller.

The class plans to use this information to produce a case study report as the capstone paper for master’s degrees. Half the class researches the underground bombings in London while the other half researches the bombings in Madrid. The groups will combine to learn the mechanics of writing about an incident like this by producing a briefing report to be presented the Ridgeway center on April 18.

“After we complete that,” Wander said, “we’re going to do a comparison between the two.”

Wander initiated the trip during spring break because it would be more interesting, beneficial and creative for the paper. There is not a lot of printed material on the subject, he said, so a lot of the unique material had to be obtained firsthand.

“We hope that when the class is finished, we’ll publish this on the Ridgeway Web site. This, we hope, will be the best resource out there on the Madrid and London subway bombings,” Keller added. “I want my students to not just leave with a master’s degree, but with a set of professional credentials.”