“While the implementation of their plan was incompetent, their aim was clear. They wanted to kill and maim on a massive scale.”
“Failed 2005 bombers jailed for life,” by Jill Lawless for the Associated Press:
LONDON – A judge on Wednesday sentenced four men he described as al-Qaida-
inspired plotters to life in prison for trying to bomb London’s transit system in July 2005, two weeks after suicide bombers killed 52 commuters.
Muktar Said Ibrahim, 29; Yassin Omar, 26; Ramzi Mohammed, 25; and Hussain
Osman, 28, must spend at least 40 years in jail before becoming eligible for parole, said Judge Adrian Fulford. A jury on Monday found them guilty of conspiracy to murder in a plot to detonate explosives-filled knapsacks on three subway trains and a bus.
The bombs failed to explode, and no one was injured.
The judge said that that if the bombs had gone off, “at least 50 people would
have died, hundreds of people would have been wounded, thousands would have had their lives
permanently damaged, disfigured or otherwise, whether they were Christian, Muslim, Jewish,
Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, agnostic or atheist.”
He said that the July 7 and July 21 plots “were both part of an al-Qaida-inspired and controlled sequence of attacks.”
Two other suspects, Manfo Kwaku Asiedu, 34, and Adel Yahya, 24, will be retried
because the jury failed to reach a verdict.
[…]
All six defendants denied the charges, saying the devices were duds and their
actions a protest against the Iraq war. But police and prosecutors said scientific tests proved the bombs were all viable. They do not know why they did not work.
“Exactly two weeks after the terrorist attacks on 7/7 these men targeted the same transport system and tried to cause the same level of death and destruction,” said Sue Hemming, head of counterterrorism at the Crown Prosecution Service.
“While the implementation of their plan was incompetent, their aim was clear. They wanted to kill and maim on a massive scale,” she said.
In both cases, the main ingredient in the bombs was the same “” hydrogen
peroxide, an easily available chemical commonly used in hair dying and coloring. The hydrogen peroxide was made into a volatile mix with flour and packed into tubs and surrounded by bolts and screws.
Unlike three of the four July 7 bombers, who were British-born, those in the
July 21 plot had come to Britain as youths from countries in the Horn of Africa. Some had
become British citizens, while others had refugee status.