An English court found three defendants guilty on Monday over a failed Islamist plot to set off bombs in London on July 21 2005, two weeks after suicide bombings that killed 52 commuters in the capital.
Muktar Said Ibrahim, Yassin Omar and Ramzi Mohammed were found guilty of conspiracy to murder after a six-month trial.
A jury that retired on June 28 has not yet reached verdicts on three other defendants allegedly behind a plot to blow up bombs on the London transport network.
The alleged conspiracy to explode home-made devices consisting of hydrogen peroxide and chapati flour in rucksacks came two weeks after the July 7 attacks that 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. One of the suspects, 27-year-old Iraqi doctor Bilal Abdulla, appeared in court in London on Saturday charged with conspiring to cause explosions.
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 accused, all of them originally from Africa but who lived in the London area, are Ibrahim (29); Mohammed (25); Omar (28); Yassin Omar (26); Manfo Kwaku Asiedu (33); and 24-year-old Adel Yahya.
During their trial at the high-security Woolwich Crown Court in south-east London they had all denied conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to cause explosions likely to endanger life.
The plot to cause carnage on the transport network dated back to a year before the actual attempt took place, prosecutors alleged.
Ibrahim, the leader of the group, travelled to Pakistan in December 2004 to learn the skills needed to organise the attack, they said, adding that he was there at the same time as July 7 mastermind Mohammed Siddique Khan and one of his fellow suicide bombers, Shehzad Tanweer.
From April 2005, the gang bought more than 440 litres of hydrogen peroxide in its highest available concentration and used Omar’s north London flat as a ”bomb factory”, according to the prosecution.
Ibrahim, Omar and Mohammed were said 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. — AFP
