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July 21 bombers sentenced to life

A judge yesterday sentenced four al-Qaeda-inspired plotters to life in prison for attempting to bomb London's transit system on July 21, 2005, two weeks after suicide bombers killed 52 commuters.

Judge Adrian Fulford said the men must spend at least 40 years in jail before becoming eligible for parole.

A jury on Monday found Muktar Said Ibrahim, 29; Yassin Omar, 26; Ramzi Mohammed, 25; and Hussain Osman, 28, guilty of conspiracy to murder in a plot to detonate explosives in knapsacks on three subway trains and a bus.

The bombs failed to explode and no one was injured.

The judge said that that if the bombs had gone off, "at least 50 people would have died, hundreds of people would have been wounded, thousands would have had their lives permanently damaged, disfigured or otherwise, whether they were Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, agnostic or atheist."

He said that the July 7 and July 21 plots "were both part of an al-Qaeda-inspired and controlled sequence of attacks."

Two other suspects, Manfo Kwaku Asiedu, 34, and Adel Yahya, 24, will be retried after the jury failed to reach a verdict.

Prosecutors said the July 21 attacks were a deliberate mirror image of the July 7 transit bombings, though the planning started long before.

Police suspect, but could not prove, that there were links between the two groups of bombers.

Fulford said the events of July 7 meant the July 21 plotters knew how deadly their bombs were likely to be.

"The family and friends of the dead and the injured, the hundreds, indeed thousands, captured underground in terrifying circumstances, the smoke, the screams of the wounded and the dying -- this each defendant knew," the judge said.

"They planned this, they prepared for it. They had spent many hours making viable bombs. After 7/7, each defendant knew exactly what the result would be," he said.

All six defendants denied the charges, saying the devices were duds and their actions a protest against the Iraq war. But police and prosecutors said scientific tests proved the bombs were all viable. They do not know why they did not work.

"Exactly two weeks after the terrorist attacks on 7/7 these men targeted the same transport system and tried to cause the same level of death and destruction," said Sue Hemming, head of counter-terrorism at the Crown Prosecution Service.

"While the implementation of their plan was incompetent, their aim was clear. They wanted to kill and maim on a massive scale," she said.

The four convicted men attempted to detonate explosives-laden backpacks on three subway trains and a bus, as in the July 7, 2005, attacks. The devices -- made from a volatile mix of hydrogen peroxide and flour packed into tubs and surrounded by bolts and screws -- did not explode.

Unlike three of the four July 7 bombers, who were British-born, those in the July 21 plot had come to Britain as youths from countries in the Horn of Africa. Some had become British citizens, while others had refugee status.

Police believe the planning for the attack started after Ibrahim returned to Britain from a trip to Pakistan in March 2005. He was in that country at the same time as two of the July 7 bombers -- Shezhad Tanweer and Mohammed Sidique Khan -- but officials do not know if they ever met.

In both cases, the main ingredient in the bombs was the same -- hydrogen peroxide, an easily available chemical commonly used in hair dying and coloring.

Police believe the transit system was not the group's original target, but was chosen following the successful attacks two weeks earlier.

The failed attack sparked a huge police manhunt for the would-be suicide bombers. The prosecution's case rested largely on testimony and transportation system video footage.
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