‘I have survivor’s guilt’

A new documentary examines the 7/7 suicide bombings in London in 2005, which killed 52 and injured almost 800. Four of those caught up in the atrocity talk to Gabriel Tate

- Gabriel Tate

Liza Williams’s recollections of 7 July 2005, when four British men - Hasib Hussain, Mohammad Sidique Khan, Germaine Lindsay and Shehzad Tanweer - blew themselves up on the London transport network, are hazy. “Memories fade,” she says. “It felt like it was time to retell the story.”

Speaking to some 750 people during the making of Netflix four-parter Attack on London: Hunting the 7/7 Bombers, the director (a 2020 Bafta winner for The Yorkshire Ripper Files) and her team wanted to cover every possible perspective, from the prime minister to MI5, police to journalists, survivors to some who knew the bombers.

In doing so, she covers the atrocity itself but also its aftermath in which Jean Charles de Menezes, a Brazilian electrician, was shot by police who wrongly believed he was one of four other bombers at large following a failed attack two weeks after 7/7.

“It is a comprehensive and visceral series,” says Williams. “I hope it’s dramatic and compelling for the viewer, but also emotionally engaging, whether we’re hearing from survivors who are still affected by it or about the untruths some people still believe about Jean Charles’s shooting. This was a huge national trauma, but I hope people will watch it and realise how important it is not to let events divide us.”

Mustafa Kurtuldu - 7/7 survivor