'Not one of the missing, but one of the murderers'

HIS family thought he was one of the missing, but it now seems clear he was the bomber and he perished with his victims.

The trail from the wreckage of the No 30 bus blown up in Tavistock Square led yesterday to raids 200 miles away in Leeds and the chilling realisation that the bombers were homegrown.

As horrors gripped London last Thursday, police in a mortuary were busy reassembling the bodies of the four “away day” suicide bombers.

Documents belonging to three of the four suspects were found amid the carnage in Tavistock Square and in the underground carriages at Aldgate and Edgware Road.

But it is the use of DNA analysis and isotope studies deployed to identify the bombers and their fragmented victims that stands out in this mass murder inquiry.

The bodies of the people close to the blasts were fragmented to varying degrees.

The bomber’s remains will have been examined for burning, explosives residues and bomb fragments.

The human remains at the sites of the bombings will have been reassembled in the mortuary by a painstaking process of labelling and DNA testing.

Prof Sue Black, a forensic anthropologist at the University of Dundee, said: “They will have used DNA testing to bring every single piece back together again.”

Relatives of the missing provide DNA samples for comparison with victims to try to establish a positive identity.

In the case of the bomber, the DNA can be compared with that held in the police’s national database to establish if he has a criminal record.

A reconstruction of the bomber’s skull can build up an image of the face, while isotope analysis of teeth and bones can reveal where he was raised.

Witnesses on the bus reported seeing an “agitated” olive-skinned man rummaging in a rucksack.

His family now know he is not one of the missing, but one of the murderers.