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Four jailed for life over 7/21 plot

Hasan Suroor

LONDON: Four men — all refugees from Africa — were on Wednesday jailed for life and ordered to serve at least 40 years each after being found guilty earlier this week of conspiring to launch a terrorist attack on London’s transport system on July 21, 2005, just two weeks after the bombings on the Underground that claimed 52 lives.

Muktar Said Ibrahim (29), Yassin Omar (26), Ramzi Mohammed (25) and Hussain Osman (28) planned to detonate explosives on three tube trains and one bus but the plot failed as the bombs did not go off.

Their plea that the bombs were fake and they simply wanted to register their protest against the Iraq invasion was rejected. Two others — Manfo Kwaku Asiedu and Adel Yahya — face retrial after the jury failed to reach a verdict. The judge, Mr Justice Fulford QC, said there was a connection between the failed attacks and the July 7 bombings.

“What happened on July 7 in 2005 is of considerable relevance to this sentencing. I have no doubt that they were both part of an al-Qaeda-inspired and controlled sequence of attacks,” he said adding that the men had planned the attacks with their “eyes wide open.”

He described it as a “viable, indeed a very nearly successful, attempt at mass murder.”

During the six-month trial, the prosecution claimed that dozens of people would have been killed if the plot had succeeded. It was also claimed that the conspiracy had been “in existence long before the events of July 7.”

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