Backgrounder: the 7/7 bombings
Updated on 01 August 2008
A court fails to reach a verdict on three men accused of conspiring to help the 7/7 bombers who blew themselves up on the London transport system in July 2005.
The outcome
Mohammed Shakil: Reuters
A jury at Kingston crown court failed to reach a verdict on in the trial of three men accused of helping to plot the deadly London suicide bombings in July 2005, which left 52 dead.
The bombings
Sadeer Saleem: Reuters
On 7 July 2005 Mohammad Sidique Khan, Shehzad Tanweer, Hasib Mir Hussain, and Germaine Lindsay detonated a series of coordinated bomb blasts on the London transport system.
Khan, Tanweer and Lindsay blew themselves up at Edgware Road, Aldgate and Russell Square tube stations at 8.50pm, and almost an hour later, at 9.47am, Hussain blew up the number 30 bus at Tavistock Square.
The bombings killed 52 people, as well as the bombers themselves and injured 700.
The bombs were the deadliest attack on London's transport system in its history.
The accused
Waheed Ali: Reuters
Mohammed Shakil, 32, Sadeer Saleem, 28 and Waheed Ali, 25, the three accused, visited London seven months before the 2005 atrocity, when they *allegedly* pinpointed potential targets for the bombing.
The key accusation against the three men is that, seven months before the 7/7 attacks, they went from Leeds to London with Hussain, the bomber who later detonated his bomb on a bus in Tavistock Square, killing himself and 13 others.
On this alleged trip, they visited a number of prominent London attractions, including the London Eye, the Natural History Museum and the London Aquarium.
According to the prosecution, the three "conducted a reconnaissance of potential targets" which "bore a striking similarity" to the final targets.
Shakil and Ali were arrested as they attempted to board planes to Pakistan at Manchester airport on 22 March 2007.
On the same day Sadeer Saleem was arrested at a house in Leeds.
Shakil, Saleem and Ali are all originally from Beeston in West Yorkshire, the home of the 7/7 bombers.
The trio denied conspiring with the four bombers and others unknown to cause explosions between 17 November 2004 and 8 July 2005.
