Just imagine that you are fast asleep in the middle of the night. You hear the sound of breaking glass, so fearing that someone is burgling your house, you creep down stairs. Suddenly you are confronted by an armed man about three feet in front of you aiming a gun at your head.  You are terrified. You think you are going to die.

Earlier this month this happened to a young Muslim man. It did not happen in Baghdad or Basra but in London. This is the tale of Mohammed Abdul Kahar, and his brother Abul who last week spoke publicly about their ordeal when their house was raided at night-time by over 250 British police and members of the security services. Kahar suddenly heard a loud scream, then a bang, saw an orange flash and realised he had been shot at close range. "I saw blood running down my chest and saw a hole in my chest. I knew I had been shot," he recalls. 

 Within hours the British press was alive with stories of a new terror threat to London and of chemical bombs. The headline in the normally conservative Daily Telegraph said it all: Terror cell “was planning nerve gas attack on capital”. "From what we believe, if it went off, what you inhaled would kill you," an anonymous source told the Telegraph.

 The intelligence that led to the raid was said to be both credible and specific. The only problem is that it was terribly wrong. Over the next few days, the public were treated to varying versions of what happened. First the police had to try and explain the shooting claiming that Kahar had first been shot after a scuffle with his brother, then by mistake, but now it looks like the shooting was both callous and deliberate.

We were told that the house contained a chemical bomb. When that could not be found, we were told it had been moved to another address. Finally we were told there had been no bomb at all. After days of searching the police found no trace of any chemical device. Kahar and his brother have now been released without charge. "I believe the only crime I had done in their eyes was being Asian with a long beard," says Mohammed Abdul Kahar. 

It now transpires that the police had misgivings about the raid from the start. The Observer newspaper last weekend reported how “the reservations were passed up the chain of command” to senior officials in the office the British government's security and intelligence co-ordinator, but despite their concerns “the police were ordered to go in”. So it looks like political pressure over-rode the concerns of the police. Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, is now investigating the nature of this political pressure.

Whatever the outcome of his investigations, what is extremely worrying is that this is neither the first time British government intelligence has been spectacularly wrong recently, nor the first time that political pressure has made a bad situation much worse. 

It is now established beyond doubt that the British intelligence on which the war on Iraq was based was wrong. Not only this, but we know that the politicians tried to exaggerate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. We now know that British intelligence was wrong in that it failed to prevent the July 7^th bombings in London last year, which killed 52 people. Since then the British government has tried to cover-up its failings surrounding that bombing.

Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, is an author of an acclaimed trilogy of books that is exploring the war on terror. Like the author Milan Rai, he has just published a devastating book on the July 7^th attacks, called “The London Bombings – An Independent Inquiry”.  He draws the parallel between the failed Iraq intelligence and that surrounding the London bombings.

“What the government did over Iraq, it has effectively repeated in its treatment of the London bombings, “ writes Ahmed. “Unfortunately, as with the status of intelligence on Iraq prior to the war, much of what the government now clams to be the unquestionable official narrative of the events of 7/7 and its context, is in fact deeply questionable. The government’s story of 7/7 is at best hopelessly inconsistent, and at worst fundamentally flawed”.

The British government has tried to argue it had no prior knowledge of the bombings and that that the 7/7 bombers were acting alone. No so, argues Ahmed. “British intelligence services had received reasonably precise advanced warning of a terrorist attack” from amongst others, Pakistan, France, US, Saudi Arabia, Spain and Israel. This intelligence provided a “clear picture of the attack’s probable date, method and targets”.

If the British had known about the attacks, why were they not stopped? Ahmed argues that some of the people implicated in the wider terror network in Britain are useful to the British as agents or informants. He claims that “for more than a decade, the British state has tolerated and indeed promoted the establishment within the UK of a terrorist network connected to Al-Qaeda.”

Ahmed continues that “operating within an American strategic framework, British and foreign policy has for more than a decade systematically facilitated al-Qaeda’s emergence, activities proliferation and consolidation in key regions considered vital to Anglo-American strategic and economic interests”.

Because of these interests, Ahmed argues that “the British based al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorist network behind 7/7, although well-known to the authorities, continues to function in tact, with its operational ability relatively unimpeded.”

The British government and the security services always claimed that the London bombers were unknown to them. Yet another book, written by a US intelligence specialist, and serialised in The Times this morning, argues that Mohammad Sidique Khan, the leader of the July 7 attacks "was considered such a dangerous threat that he was banned from flying to America two years before the attack in London." If the CIA knew, why not M15? This new book raises even more unanswered questions about the 7/7 attacks.

There are other unresolved questions too. Flawed intelligence led to the state shooting of the Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes last year. On the morning of 22 July 2005, de Menezes walked from his flat in South London towards the London Underground. This was two weeks after the July 7^th bombings, and the morning after London had experience four failed bomb attacks. The frantic hunt was on for the bombers. The police believed de Menezes was one of them. Despite the hot summer weather the public was originally told that de Menezes wore a heavy quilted jacket. We were told he leapt over the ticket barrier and ran onto a train, which police worried he would blow up. On the train, he was shot dead by an undercover police officer.

After the shooting, the police announced they were “very confident” that de Menezes was one of the failed bombers. This was not true. He had no bomb. He was not armed. We later learnt that he had not run on to the train. In contrast he slowly picked up a newspaper to read on his journey.  He was not wearing a heavy jacket. He had not vaulted the ticket barriers. He was not a terrorist. He was on his way to work.

The truth is that for three miles he was tracked by a surveillance team who followed him from his house to the underground station. At any time he could have been stopped. Instead he was shot eleven times in the head. Ahmed writes that, although there is still much to find out what went wrong with the shooting, “purported anti-terrorist operations conducted in the name of national security without sufficient democratic accountability can backfire drastically.”

With alarming regularity, our police, politicians and security services are getting it wrong. Now to add to list of mistakes on Iraq, the July 7^th   bombings, Jean Charles De Menezes, we now have Mohammed Abdul Kahar and his brother in East London.

Every time the police bungle another piece of intelligence or shoot a person, it leads to fear and mistrust. Slowly but surely public confidence ebbs away at the time when the Police need it most. Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, the leader of the Muslim Parliament, has warned the bungled raid in East London will have “a devastating impact” on racial harmony.  Already moderate Asian families are said to be thinking of leaving the UK, whereas the raid is said to have radicalized sections of Asian youths.

Last week, Tony Blair told a press conference that he has “complete confidence in our police and our security services in tackling the terrorist threat we face”. After yet another bungled operation, people from all racial backgrounds in the UK fundamentally disagree with him. The government has to hold a public inquiry into the 7/7 bombings and subsequent bungled operations by the police and security serices. It will be the only way to rebuild public trust. Before it is too late.