A survivor of the 7 July suicide bomb attacks in London 20 years ago has said how he effectively “died that day” and has had to reinvent himself.
Dan Biddle, who lost his legs in the blast on a tube train at Edgware Road station, also criticised the failure of the government to hold a public enquiry into the attacks.
Recalling the events of that he told GB News in an exclusive interview: “I could feel somebody staring at me. It was just this really unnerving feeling. It was one of those stares where he didn’t blink. He was totally fixated on what was in front of him, almost like he was staring through me. It was that intense.
“And then I was just about to go like, ‘is there a problem, mate, what you’re looking at?’ Then I just saw his hand go… and then…
“It’s still really surreal. It’s still a kind of strange thought to realise that I was in right in the middle of what happened that day, and even though it’s 20 years, it still feels like yesterday. The pain and the emotional torment that goes with that is just as fresh now as when it just happened.
“The way I’ve had to deal with it is the Dan Biddle that I was at 8.52 on July 7 died at 8.52 on the 7th of July, and I’ve had to reinvent myself and everything that I was trying to do. I’ve had to start afresh, and I’ve been incredibly lucky that my wife Gem is an amazing support, and gets me through so much of it.”
Dan, the author of a new book called Back From The Dead: The Untold Story Of the 7/7 Bombings, added: “My whole story of 7/7 is what I kind of term as so many opportunities that were presented to me to do something different or to stick to my normal routine and not step outside of that. It was a sliding doors series of moments.
“There’s countless times where, if I’d have made a different decision, then I wouldn’t have been on that train at that time, if I’d have got up on time, if I’d missed my stop. There’s so many things that I can think back on and think if I knew, I’d have done this, if I never done that, but it serves no purpose now, because what’s happened has happened.
“From the area of the train that I was on when the bomb went off, I’m the only one that survived. That killed everybody around me, and that’s incredibly tough to live with, to know that you survived something that everybody around you didn’t.
“I was pretty much lying in and amongst their bodies and body parts for about an hour and 40 minutes before I was taken out the tunnel.
“I think the most terrifying thing about it is just how calm he was. There wasn’t a hesitation when he reached for the bag, when he was looking at me as if it was as if he was looking through me.
“It was all very calculated, because he leant forward and looked along the carriage. And when I was interviewed by the anti-terrorist squad a few months later, they basically said he was looking to see where the biggest group of people were in the train. So it was a very evil, calculated act.
“But there was no fear. There was no hesitation. And the scariest thing of all was he just looked like everybody else. There wasn’t anything about him that I would look at and say he looks like a terrorist. There was no screaming or shouting or anything like that.
“It was just a very calm one action, and he was out of the picture. And I’ve had to live the rest of my life with the consequences of what he did.”
He said he was thrown onto the tracks by the blast and was saved by a fellow passenger: “I was stood next to the bomber. When the bomb went off, it blew me through the train door, so I basically hit the tunnel wall and then bounced back into the crawl space between the tunnel wall and the track, and I kind of landed at an angle.
“I thought I was going to die. I knew I was seriously injured, and I just started screaming for help, and I just heard this very deep South African accent shout back at me. He shouted, ‘what’s your name?’
“I didn’t know if he was talking to me or somebody else, but I thought I’m just going to answer it and hope for the best. So I shouted, ‘it’s Dan’. He said, ‘my name’s Adrian, keep talking and I’ll find you.’
“So where I was, kind of the tunnel wall side of the track, Adrian was on the other side, so that the train was between us, and he had to crawl underneath the train and crawl through god knows what to come out the other side. And he was quite badly hurt as well.
“He had a severely lacerated head. He dislocated his shoulder and broke two ribs. So actually, put his shoulder back in place before he crawled under the train to get to me, a truly remarkable human being.
“My left leg was blown clean off and I severed the femoral artery. My right leg from the knee down, had been blown around 180 degrees, and the bones had snapped and come through the shin.
“When Adrian found me, he basically said to me, ‘I’m not going to lie to you, Dan, this is really going to hurt’. And I thought, I’ve been set on fire, I know I’ve lost one leg. The pole that I was leaning against, I pulled out of myself, and you’re telling me this is going to hurt, and he wasn’t wrong, because he basically forced his hand into what was left at a leg fan, the artery, and pinched.”
Dan said he was disappointed by the way the 7/7 anniversary is not remembered in the same way as the 9/11 attacks: “I think if you look at the way that 9/11 is remembered in this country, there’s always something on about 9/11 we’re constantly reminded about the atrocity that happened out there and that happened in the States.
“And yet, when it’s on our own soil, in our own country, it’s almost as if somebody just wants to wipe it from the public psyche, as if, ‘let’s just make sure that didn’t we can pretend it didn’t happen’. For some of us, we can’t. We’ve got to live with that day every single day of the week.”
“I think for me, because of the issues that I’ve had with complex PTSD and depression, and the impact that’s had on my life, I wanted to do something to kind of hopefully give a little bit of hope. And I coined the phrase turning trauma into triumph, to go from where I was 20 years ago and the horrendous state, I was in to where I am now.
“Life isn’t easy and I really do struggle with my PTSD, but I’m still here. I’m still incredibly lucky to have a chance at a life. So I wanted to write a book to hopefully for somebody that’s struggling to read that and go, yeah, there is a way through with the right support and the right people, I can potentially come through the other side of it.
He added: “After 7/7, me and a lot of other people were calling for a public inquiry. We constantly have that shut down. And I think the reason I don’t think London is any safer is because we didn’t have the public inquiry.
“If you jump forward a few years, the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes had a public inquiry. The Manchester attack had a public inquiry. Grenfell had a public inquiry. All were absolutely wonderful and deserved it.
“7/7 was the first attack of his kind in his country. It was the biggest loss of life in a terrorist attack. It was a first suicide attack, and there were clear failings yet no public inquiry.
“Nobody has ever been able to turn around and say to me, ’7/7 doesn’t meet the criteria for a public inquiry, but these do, and this is where the difference is’.
“I think they know that the intelligence services and the government made a horrendous mistake.
“I think they’re naive given the arrogance of Tony Blair to think that you can go to war in a Middle Eastern country and it not have any repercussions on home soil.
“I think the fact that when Blair was interviewed, he turned around and said that there is no link between al-Qaeda and the 77 attacks, yet when Khan made his suicide video, he openly states that that is the reason. So you kind of get lied to constantly. And I think that the hope is that you just start believing the lies. Well, some of us won’t.”
Back From the Dead: The Untold Story of the 7/7 Bombings by Dan Biddle with Douglas Thompson (Mirror Books, £20) is out now
