A British jury found three men guilty on Monday of conspiracy to murder in a terrorist bombing campaign, but could not find enough evidence to convict them of a plot to blow up trans-Atlantic airliners.
Prosecutors said they would consider a request for a retrial of the three men — plus four others on whom the jury was unable to reach verdicts over the plot to blow up airliners. But they said they had made no decision.
A jury found Abdulla Ahmed Ali, Assad Sarwar and Tanvir Hussain guilty of conspiracy to murder by trying to make a bomb out of hydrogen peroxide.
Judge David Calvert-Smith said sentencing would be at a later date.
The jury failed to reach verdicts on charges against four other defendants — Ibrahim Savant, Arafat Waheed Khan, Waheed Zaman and Umar Islam.
An eighth man, Mohammed Gulzar, was found not guilty.
The jury also was unable to reach a verdict on prosecutors’ claims that Ali led a plot involving the others that intended to target passenger jets flying from London to major North American cities with suicide attacks.
Prosecutor Peter Wright said during the trial that the men planned to attack United Airlines, American Airlines and Air Canada flights at the height of the 2006 summer vacation season.
The men’s plans were stopped by British and US intelligence officers in a marathon investigation that led to a bomb factory in eastern London, British woodlands where chemicals had been dumped and to Japan, Mauritius, South Africa and Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas where conversations were intercepted.
Police arrested two dozen suspects in dawn raids across Britain on Aug. 10, 2006, a date that would go down in history as the day air travel changed dramatically.
Airports in the US and Europe ground to a halt with hundreds of flights canceled over security concerns. Planes were stuck on runways for hours. Tempers flared as passengers lined up to surrender carryon items under new security precautions that restricted the quantity of liquids in their luggage.
The failure to secure verdicts on a case that disrupted the worldwide travel industry is a major setback to the British government, which has struggled to convict suspected terrorists with intelligence information gathered from multiple countries. Last month, prosecutors said they would seek a retrial after the jury in the case of three men accused of helping to plan the July 7, 2005, London transit bombings was unable to reach a verdict.
A lawyer for Ali, the alleged ringleader of the group, insisted last month he was guilty only of planning a childish stunt to make a political point.
Ali acknowledged planning to release anti-Western videos and detonate explosives at a high-profile location as part of a campaign to change the British government’s policy toward the Muslim world.
“It was childish, it was stupid, but it is not murder,” the lawyer, Nadine Radford, said during a July hearing.
Ali, Sarwar and Hussain had already pleaded guilty to conspiring to cause explosions. All eight denied conspiracy to murder.
Ali told the court they planned to set off a small bomb at a site such as the Houses of Parliament or Heathrow Airport to advertise a propaganda documentary protesting the West’s actions in Afghanistan and Iraq. He denied intending to kill anyone.
Ali, Sarwar, Hussain and two others also have acknowledged conspiring to cause a public nuisance by distributing al-Qaeda-style videos threatening suicide bomb attacks in Britain.
The three remaining defendants deny all charges.
Prosecutors said the airline cell was likely inspired by both the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the July 2005 London transit bombings, although they did not allege the men had direct links to al-Qaeda.
Wright told the court that police found a computer memory stick in Ali’s pocket with details of flights from London’s Heathrow Airport to Chicago, New York, Boston, Denver, Miami and Montreal.
Prosecutors also say the men had stockpiled enough hydrogen peroxide to create 20 liquid bombs, although they did not create any viable explosives, and no date had been chosen for the attacks.
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