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Three found guilty of 7/21 London plot

Hasan Suroor

— Photo: AP

Ramzi Mohammed leaving Oval Underground railway station in this CCTV footage.

LONDON: Three men of African origin were on Monday found guilty of conspiring to launch a bomb attack on London’s transport system on July 21, 2005 — two weeks after the devastating bombings on the Underground which killed 52 persons.

Three more were awaiting verdict at the time of writing as the jury was not able to reach a unanimous conclusion. The judge then asked it to give a majority verdict which would be acceptable to the court.

The plot, which involved planting bombs on three Tube trains and one bus, failed as the explosives did not go off. The accused claimed that the bombs were fake and they had simply intended to register their protest against the Iraq invasion.

The men held guilty were identified as Muktar Said Ibrahim (29), Yassin Omar (26), and Ramzi Mohammed (25). Ibrahim and Mohammed were arrested a week after the incident in a flat in west London after a long stand-off with the police. Dramatic images of the two men as they came out of the flat were telecast live around the world.

Omar was arrested in Birmingham after a violent struggle with officers.

During the trial, which lasted six months, the Woolich Crown court was told that dozens of people would have been killed if the bombs had gone off. The prosecution claimed that the conspiracy had been “in existence long before the events of July 7”.

Rejecting the defendants’ claim that they had not intended the bombs to explode, Nigel Sweeney, QC, prosecutor, said: “The failure of those bombs to explode owed nothing to the intention of these defendants, rather it was simply the good fortune of the public that day that they were spared.”

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