LONDON, 10 July 2007 — A jury at Woolwich Crown Court in south London yesterday convicted four of the six Al-Qaeda-linked men involved in the 7/21 failed bombing plot against London’s transport network.
Were it not for the ringleader’s basic lack of arithmetic when he mixed the wrong ratio of ingredients for the bombs, the terror plot could have been “bigger and better” than the 7/7 suicide attacks in London a fortnight earlier. Instead, fortunately for the commuters, the bombs failed to detonate, leaving the would-be suicide bombers scurrying for their lives, and precipitating the biggest manhunt in British criminal history.
The ringleader Muktar Said Ibrahim, 29, an Eritrean asylum seeker, Yassin Omar, 26, from Somalia, Ramzi Mohammed, 25, also from Somalia and Hussein Osman, 28, from Ethiopia, were all found guilty of attempted murder and conspiracy to cause explosions on a No. 26 bus at Shoreditch and at Warren Street and Oval underground stations respectively on July 21, 2005. Fifty-two people were killed when four suicide bombers carried out suicide attacks in London two weeks before.
The convicted four each face life in prison, most likely with a strong recommendation by the judge, Justice Fulford QC, that they be deported to their countries of origin once they serve their sentences. Justice Fulford earlier directed the jury that he would accept a majority verdict of 10-to-2. But the above four were convicted unanimously, after a trial lasting just over six months. Mohammed and Ibrahim were captured a week later at a flat in west London, while Omar was arrested in Birmingham. Hussein Osman is the alleged Shepherd’s Bush bomber.
Verdicts on two other defendants — Manfo Kwaku Asiedu, 33, accused of targeting White City but who subsequently got cold feet and abandoned his explosive device in bushes at Little Wormwood Scrubs; and Adel Yahya, 24, accused of playing an important behind-the-scenes planning and logistics role, who all deny charges against them — were still being considered by the jury late yesterday.
Crown prosecutor, Nigel Sweeney QC, told the jury that the six men did not choose a date “just 14 days after the carnage of July 7.”
On the contrary, there was evidence that the conspiracy “had been in existence long before the events of July 7” and was not a “hastily-arranged copycat” operation.
“The failure of those bombs to explode owed nothing to the intention of these defendants, rather it was simply the good fortune of the traveling public that day that they were spared,” said Sweeney.
Forensic experts testified that if the homemade bombs had gone off, the devastation would have been as bad if not worse than 7/7.
The six men all pleaded not guilty and claimed the bombs were fakes and a hoax, primarily intended as a protest against the war in Iraq and the killing of Muslims there and in Afghanistan.
The court heard that Scotland Yard officers gathered 28,000 items of CCTV; viewed 18,000 man-hours; and used seven hours of crucial CCTV in evidence.
They found crucial evidence at Omar’s one-bedroom flat in New Southgate in North London, which effectively was the “bomb factory” where the men spent hours distilling hydrogen peroxide from hair bleach and flour to make it more readily explosive. To add to the shrapnel-maiming factor of the bombs, they added nails and bolts to the cocktail.
They used a detonator called “Mother of Satan.”
A scribbled note found at the flat showed that Ibrahim wrongly calculated the ratios of the ingredients, thus rendering the bombs harmless. Ibrahim apparently had failed GCSE maths.
Ibrahim, the court heard, trained in Al-Qaeda camps in Pakistan in 2004 at the same time as 7/7 ring leader Mohammed Siddique Khan and his fellow suicide bomber Shehzad Tanweer. He had ironically been granted a British passport just three months earlier.
Most of the six men also attended on-and-off the Finsbury Park Mosque in North London and allegedly got radicalized by self-styled “imams” Abu Hamza and Abdullah Al-Faisal. The latter was recently deported to his native Jamaica after serving a sentence for inciting racial hatred and murder.
The convictions are the latest in a spate of guilty verdicts against terrorists in British courts over the last few months for a motley of targeted bombing activities ranging from inciting hatred and terrorism over the internet; and conspiracy to use vehicles laden with explosives and shrapnel as delivery systems for suicide bombs targeted against nightclubs and transport assets.
On Sunday the British Government’s new security supremo, Admiral Sir Alan West, the former First Sea Lord, and Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s minister for security, warned that the fight against “Islamist” terrorism could take up to 15 years to eradicate and that the danger from both homegrown and foreign terrorists is at its greatest ever level currently.
The bleak warning comes in the aftermath of the June 30, 2007 terrorist campaign involving two attempted car bombings in central London and an attack on the arrivals terminal at Glasgow Airport.
Some six medical doctors and one laboratory technician have been detained in the UK and one doctor in Australia over the failed plot. On Saturday, Iraqi doctor Bilal Abdullah, 27, one of the two suspects involved in the foiled flaming Jeep bombing at Glasgow Airport, became the first suspect to be charged in connection with the campaign and was remanded in custody by magistrates at the City of Westminster Court in central London. He is scheduled for trial at the Old Bailey on July 27, 2007.
Yesterday, Australian police were granted an extra 48 hours to continue detaining Dr. Mohammed Haneef, an Indian doctor who is the cousin of two of the doctors arrested in the UK, in connection with the suspected UK car bomb attacks. Haneef was arrested a week ago at Brisbane Airport enroute to India on a one-way ticket.
Meanwhile, Interpol, the international police agency, openly criticized Britain and especially Scotland Yard for failing to cooperate with the agency in information exchange and not checking immigrants to Britain against the Interpol database.
Ronald Noble, Interpol Chief, told Sky News that “the guys detained last week could be wanted, arrested or convicted anywhere in the world and the UK would not know. There is not even a single officer from the Counter-terrorism Unit at the Metropolitan Police seconded to Interpol in Paris.”
Only a few days ago Prime Minister Gordon Brown reiterated his call for a better flow of information about “the potential recruitment or the actual recruitment” activities of terrorist groups.
“I want the system that we are trying to expand between Europe, a system whereby we know, who are potential terrorist suspects. Then we may have a better idea about people coming into different countries, whether as professional recruits or in other ways, and about what the dangers and the risks that we face are. I think it's very important that we tighten this up and it's something that we are looking at as a matter of urgency,” he said.
