Four convicted in failed 2005 bombing in London

Four men were convicted Monday in a failed attack on the city’s transit system on July 21, 2005, that mirrored lethal suicide bombings two weeks earlier, on July 7.

The convictions came days after yet another attempted terrorist strike. The failed car bombings in London and Glasgow in June illuminated Britain’s continuing battle with terrorism with suspected links to Islamic militancy that has consumed British police and prosecutors.

More than 100 people await trial on charges arising from several suspected conspiracies since four suicide bombers killed themselves and 52 other people in the attack on the London transportation system on July 7, 2005.

Two weeks later, a group of men carried explosives in backpacks onto three subway trains and a double-decker bus. But the makeshift bombs failed to detonate.

The defendants argued during the trial that they had merely intended to frighten people in a protest against the Iraq war when they carried homemade bombs in backpacks onto three London subway trains and a bus.

But prosecutors argued that only poor bombmaking skills, hot weather or “good fortune” prevented the bombs, made of hydrogen peroxide and Indian chapatti flour, from exploding and causing death and injury on the scale of the July 7 attack.

In a London criminal court on Monday, the men – Muktar Said Ibrahim, 29; Hussain Osman, 28; Yassin Omar, 26; and Ramzi Mohamed, 25; all immigrants from the Horn of Africa – were found guilty of conspiracy to murder. No date has been set for sentencing.

One of them, Ibrahim, described by prosecutors as the leader of the group, traveled to Sudan in 2003 and Pakistan in 2004 to train in terrorist camps, prosecutors said. He was in Pakistan at the same time as two of the July 7 bombers, but it is not known whether the three men ever met, British security officials said.

A jury of nine women and three men is still considering its verdict on two other men accused of involvement in the conspiracy, Manfo Kwaku Asiedu, 34, and Adel Yahya, 24.

It is not clear why the explosives failed to detonate, the prosecution said during the six-month trial. The bombs contained chapati flour, and hydrogen peroxide in plastic tubs with pieces of metal taped to the outside.

June Plot Suspect worked in aviation

Kafeel Ahmed, the engineer identified by the police as one of two main suspects in last month’s British car bomb plot, worked for much of last year as an aeronautical engineer for an Indian outsourcing company that designs aircraft parts for companies like Boeing and Airbus.

Ahmed worked in the Bangalore office of the company, Infotech Enterprises, between December 2005 and July 2006, a company spokesman said in a telephone interview on Monday. The company did not say exactly which aviation projects Ahmed, one of 5,500 employees, worked on.

Ahmed is one of two men described by police as principal suspects in the failed attacks. Police said he drove a Jeep Cherokee loaded with gasoline canisters into the terminal of Glasgow International Airport on June 30.

Burns cover 90 percent of his body, the police say, and he remains in critical condition.

The New York Times