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The July 21, 2005 London bomb plotters
09 Jul 2007 16:12:59 GMT
Source: Reuters
(Adds fourth man found guilty)

July 9 (Reuters) - Four men were found guilty on Monday of plotting botched suicide bombings on London's transport system on July 21, 2005. They will be sentenced later.

The jury is considering verdicts against two other men accused of the same charges.

Here are some details about the convicted men:

MUKTAH SAID IBRAHIM:

Ibrahim, the plot's ringleader and self-confessed bomb-maker, was born in Eritrea and came to Britain in the 1990s when he was a teenager to escape the war with Ethiopia.

He tried to set off a bomb on a bus near Bank underground train station in London's financial district. He claimed he had changed his mind on the day and that it had gone off by mistake.

Ibrahim became a practising Muslim in 2003 and by 2004 he regularly distributed Islamic literature in central London and was arrested on Oxford Street in London's main shopping district for a public order offence.

Prosecutors said he had undergone terrorism training in Sudan in 2003 although he said he had been visiting relatives.

The court was also told he had gone to Pakistan in December 2004 to take part in jihad or train for it.

In his defence, he said he had deliberately made fake bombs that were not designed to kill, as part of a protest against the war in Iraq. He said he dreamt up the "hoax" a year earlier because other protests were not having an impact.

RAMZI MOHAMMED:

Mohammed tried to detonate a bomb on the Northern Line underground near Oval station in south London.

He is a Somalian who also came to live in Britain in the 1990s. He told the court he had attended sermons at London's Finsbury Park Mosque by cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri, who was jailed in 2006 for inciting his followers to kill non-believers.

Closed circuit television footage from the train he tried to bomb showed him turning his rucksack with the explosives towards a woman with a child in a pushchair as he tried to detonate it.

He was seen fleeing the scene wearing a New York top, which prosecutors said was to evoke the memories of Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. He left a suicide note in which he told his family to "rejoice" at his actions.

In his defence, he said the "hoax" was a "stupid idea" that had made life worse for Muslims.

YASSIN HASSAN OMAR:

Omar tried to set off a bomb on a Victoria Line underground train at Warren Street station in central London.

He was born in Somalia and came to Britain as a refugee. His flat was the bomb-making factory. He got married at a hastily arranged ceremony four days before the failed bombings.

A school friend, Steven Bentley, said Omar had also been a follower of Abu Hamza after becoming interested in religion at about 18, when he started wearing traditional Muslim attire.

He fled to Birmingham in central England after the bombings wearing his mother-in-law's burka and carrying a handbag.

When arrested by police, he was found standing in a bath, wearing a rucksack. He too argued that the plot was a hoax and his defence team said he was "simple-minded". HUSSEIN OSMAN:

Osman, who tried to detonate a bomb on a Hammersmith and City Line train at Shepherd's Bush in west London, said he was born in Ethiopia and that his real name was Handi Issac.

He lived in Italy during the early 1990s and moved to Britain in 1996. After his bomb didn't work, Osman jumped from the train and then ran through an elderly couple's house, telling them: "I won't hurt you. I'm just passing through".

He fled the country on the Eurostar train service using someone else's passport and was finally arrested in Italy. He told Italian investigators that the plot was meant to scare people and not kill them.


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