A British court sentenced four men on Wednesday to 40 years in jail each for an al-Qaeda-directed attempt to carry out suicide bomb attacks on London’s transport system on July 21 2005.
Muktah Said Ibrahim, Yassin Hassan Omar, Ramzi Mohammed and Hussein Osman were found guilty on Monday of conspiracy to murder in connection with the botched attacks, which occurred two weeks after the deadly July 7 bombings.
The four men had tried to set off homemade bombs on three London underground trains and a bus in a copy of the suicide attacks in London two weeks earlier that killed 52 people. But their homemade explosives failed to detonate properly.
The trial judge said the men had wanted to replicate the carnage of July 7 and that both cells had been under the direction of al-Qaeda
”I have no doubt they were part of an al-Qaeda-inspired and -controlled sequence of attacks,” the judge said.
”It’s clear that at least 50 people would have died, hundreds would have been wounded thousands would have had their lives permanently damaged,” he told the court.
Prosecutors also told Woolwich Crown Court in London that they would seek a second trial against Manfo Kwaku Asiedu and Adel Yahya after the jury failed to reach a verdict against them over the same charge. — Reuters