Four found guilty of 21/7 plot
Updated on 09 July 2007
Four men have been found guilty today of an extremist Muslim plot to launch a series of suicide bomb attacks on the London transport system exactly two weeks after 7/7.
Muktar Said Ibrahim, Yassin Omar and Ramzi Mohammed were convicted of conspiracy to murder at London's Woolwich Crown Court.
Later in the afternoon, Hussain Osman was also found guilty.
The jury was then sent home for the night after failing to reach verdicts on Manfo Kwaku Asiedu and Adel Yahya.
The terror cell attempted to detonate hydrogen peroxide and chapatti flour bombs covered in shrapnel on three tube trains and a bus on July 21, 2005.
Their murderous plan only failed at the last moment because of problems with the home-made explosives, hot weather, or mere "good fortune", Woolwich Crown Court heard.
Timeline of events: 21 July 2005
12.30pm: Mohammed detonates bomb on London Underground. Is seen turning bomb towards mother and child before attempting to detonate explosives. When challenged about 'goo' coming from rucksack, claims it is bread and flees.
12.40pm: Omar detonates bomb at Warren Street station on Victoria Line at 12.40pm approx and flees the scene.
1pm: Ibrahim attempts to detonate bomb at the top of the number 26 bus near junction of Shoreditch High Street and Hackney Road.
Verdicts read out
As the guilty verdicts were read out, Ibrahim, 29, of Stoke Newington, north London, closed his eyes and looked down at his hands.
Omar, 26, of New Southgate, north London, and Mohammed, 25, of North Kensington, west London, both stared at the judge.
Judge Fulford said they would not need to re-appear in court until sentencing.
As he was led out of the dock, Mohammed grinned to himself.
Although the men planned to attack the capital just a fortnight after the "carnage" of July 7 in which 52 innocent people were killed, it was not some "hastily arranged copycat", the prosecution alleged.
In fact, the plot began nearly a year before.
In December 2004, Ibrahim - the cell's "emir" or leader - travelled to Pakistan to learn the necessary skills to carry out a terrifying atrocity in the UK, just three months after being granted a British passport.
He was there at exactly the same time as July 7 ring leader Mohammed Siddique Khan and his fellow suicide bomber Shehzad Tanweer.
Timeline: the police operation
After their plan failed, all three men went into hiding or fled. Omar escaped to Birmingham dressed as a woman in a burka.
27 July 2007: Omar arrested in a dawn raid during which armed police nearly gunned him down when they found him standing in a bath, fully clothed, with a rucksack on his back.
29 July 2007: Ibrahim and Mohammed were drawn out of the latter's Delgarno Gardens flat wearing only their underpants after officers threw CS gas canisters inside.
They had armed themselves with homemade kitchen knife and mop handle spears to attack police, but never used them.
Preparations for the July 21 plot began in earnest in April 2005, when the terror cell started buying the first components of their home-made explosive devices.
Over the next few months, more than 440 litres of hydrogen peroxide was purchased at its highest commercially available concentration.
Omar's one-bedroom flat in New Southgate became the "bomb factory" where the men spent hours boiling the chemical to make it more readily explosive.
In the early hours of July 21, Ibrahim, Omar and Mohammed met at Mohammed's flat.
There they mixed, by hand, the peroxide with chapatti flour and stuck nuts and screws onto the plastic mixture containers to cause maximum injury.
They rigged-up the devices with a detonator and a battery and set out with the rucksack bombs.
