An English court found three men guilty Monday over a failed Islamist plot to set off bombs in London on July 21, 2005, two weeks after suicide bombings which killed 52 commuters in the capital. Muktar Said Ibrahim, 29, Yassin Omar, 26, and Ramzi Mohammed, 25, were found guilty of conspiracy to murder after a six-month trial.
The alleged conspiracy to explode home-made devices consisting of hydrogen peroxide and chapati flour in rucksacks came exactly 14 days after the July 7 attacks which killed a total of 56 people, including the four bombers.
The partial verdict came on the seventh day of the jury's deliberations and amid intense media interest in Britain, which is on high alert following three failed car bombings in London and Glasgow, Scotland, last month.
Eight suspects are being held in connection with those incidents. Prime Minister Gordon Brown attended a sombre, low-key memorial event on the second anniversary of the July 7 attacks on Saturday.
The July 21 jurors have not yet reached verdicts on three other defendants allegedly behind a plot to blow up bombs on the London transport network - Hussain Osman, 28, Manfo Kwaku Asiedu, 34, and Adel Yahya, 24. The six men in the case are of African origin but live in London. During their trial at the high-security Woolwich Crown Court in south-east London, all had denied the charges.
Ibrahim, Omar and Mohammed were said by prosecutors to have met at Mohammed's flat early on July 21 and hand mixed peroxide and chapati flour used in the bombs, and also rigged up detonators and batteries.
Mohammed was the first to strike, at around 12:30 pm on an Underground train near Oval station, south London, where he turned towards a mother and her nine-month-old son before trying, and failing, to blow himself up. When he was challenged by an off-duty fire-fighter afterwards, he said that the sticky liquid coming from his rucksack was bread, prosecutors said.
About ten minutes later, Omar detonated his device, again with limited impact, on another Underground train at Warren Street, central London. As he was trying to escape afterwards, he stopped two Muslim women, asked them for help, and when they refused, demanded: "What type of Muslim are you?" Another 20 minutes after that, Ibrahim tried unsuccessfully to blow himself up on a bus in Shoreditch, east London.
All three fled or went into hiding after the attempted attacks, with Omar escaping to Birmingham, central England, dressed in a burka. He was arrested six days later by police who found him standing in a bath, fully clothed and with a rucksack on his back.
The remaining pair were detained by police in London two days later. Television pictures showed them surrendering to officers in their underpants. Police found videos of beheadings, suicide attacks and speeches by Osama bin Laden, as well as newspaper cuttings on the July 7 bombings, at Omar's flat.
He had also attended sessions by radical hook-handed cleric Abu Hamza, jailed in Britain for stirring up racial hatred and accused by the United States, which wants him extradited, of being part of a global jihadi plot.
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