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LONDON : A British court found four men guilty on Monday over a failed Islamist plot to set off bombs in London on July 21, 2005, two weeks after suicide bombings which killed 52 commuters in the capital.
Muktar Said Ibrahim, 29, Yassin Omar, 26, Ramzi Mohammed, 25, and Hussain Osman, 28, were found guilty of conspiracy to murder after a six-month trial.
The conspiracy to explode home-made devices consisting of hydrogen peroxide and chapati flour in rucksacks came exactly 14 days after the July 7 attacks which killed a total of 56 people, including the four bombers.
The verdicts came on the seventh day of the jury's deliberations and amid intense media interest in Britain, which is on high alert following three failed car bombings in London and Glasgow, Scotland, last month.
Eight suspects are being held in connection with those incidents.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown attended a sombre, low-key memorial event on the second anniversary of the July 7 attacks on Saturday.
Jurors at high-security Woolwich Crown Court, south-east London, have not yet reached verdicts on two other alleged July 21 plotters - Manfo Kwaku Asiedu, 34, and Adel Yahya, 24.
They will continue their deliberations on Tuesday and sentencing will take place after the remaining two verdicts are reached.
All the men, who denied the charges against them, are reportedly from the Horn of Africa, although they lived in the British capital.
The group were said by prosecutors to have met at Mohammed's flat early on July 21 and hand mixed peroxide and chapati flour used in the bombs, and also rigged up detonators and batteries.
Mohammed was the first to strike, at around 12:30 pm on an Underground train near Oval station, south London, where he turned towards a mother and her nine-month-old son before trying, and failing, to blow himself up.
When he was challenged by an off-duty firefighter afterwards, he told him that the sticky liquid coming from his rucksack was bread, prosecutors said.
About 10 minutes later, Omar detonated his device, again with limited impact, on another Underground train at Warren Street, central London.
As he was trying to escape afterwards, he stopped two Muslim women, asked them for help, and when they refused, demanded: "What type of Muslim are you?"
Another 20 minutes after that, Ibrahim tried unsuccessfully to blow himself up on a bus in Shoreditch, east London.
Osman, meanwhile, tried to set off a bomb on an Underground train near Shepherd's Bush, west London.
When it did not work, he lept from the train and walked down the track before running into an elderly couple's home and saying: "I won't hurt you, I'm just passing through."
All four fled or went into hiding after the attempted attacks, with Omar escaping to Birmingham, central England, dressed in a burka and Osman travelling to Rome.
Omar was arrested six days later by police who found him standing in a bath, fully clothed and with a rucksack on his back.
Ibrahim and Mohammed were detained by police in London two days afterwards. Television pictures showed them surrendering to officers in their underpants.
Osman was detained by authorities in Rome on July 29 and was returned to Britain in September 2005.
Police found videos of beheadings, suicide attacks and speeches by Osama bin Laden, as well as newspaper cuttings on the July 7 bombings, at Omar's north London flat, which prosecutors said was used as a "bomb factory."
He had also attended sessions by radical hook-handed cleric Abu Hamza, jailed in Britain for stirring up racial hatred and accused by the United States, which wants him extradited, of being part of a global jihadi plot.
Ibrahim, the leader of the group, underwent jihad training in Sudan in 2003, prosecutors said.
And Mohammed left a suicide note, urging his eldest son: "Look after your little brother and you shall see me in paradise again, God willing." - AFP/de
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