Nigel Sweeney

Four men are found guilty of plotting to bomb London’s transport network on 21 July, 2005, two weeks after the 7/7 bombings (see July 21, 2005). After a six-month trial, the jury unanimously convicts Muktar Ibrahim, Yassin Omar, Ramzi Mohammed, and Hussain Osman, of conspiracy to murder. The four are sentenced to life imprisonment, with a minimum sentence of 40 years. Evidence included thousands of hours of CCTV film, as well as a suicide note left by Mohammed for his girlfriend and two children asking them to “rejoice in happiness.” The men had also been monitored attending a militant training camp in the Lake District in 2004 (see May 2-August 2004). No verdict is reached for two other men accused of being members of the conspiracy. The men, Adel Yahya and Manfo Kwaku Asiedu, face a retrial. [BBC, 7/10/2007] Asiedu is said to have been the fifth bomber who abandoned his bomb at the last minute. He says he went along with the plot because he feared being killed by the others. Yahya is not accused of directly taking part in the attempted bombings, but is charged with assisting the others, for example by buying some of the bomb-making materials. [BBC, 7/11/2007] Shortly before the retrial is to begin, Asiedu pleads guilty and is sentenced to 33 years in prison, while Yahya pleads guilty to a lesser charge of possessing terrorist information and is sentenced to seven years in prison. [London Times, 11/5/2007; Daily Telegraph, 11/21/2007] The defendants claim that the bombs were fakes and that the plot was a protest against the war in Iraq. Prosecutor Nigel Sweeney tells the jury that the plot “had been in existence long before the events of July 7” and was not a “hastily-arranged copycat” operation. Responding to the defense, Sweeney says: “The failure of those bombs to explode owed nothing to the intention of these defendants, rather it was simply the good fortune of the traveling public that day that they were spared.” [BBC, 7/10/2007] The judge, Justice Adrian Fulford, also dismisses the suggestion that the men did not intend to cause carnage. He says, “This was a viable and a very nearly successful attempt at mass murder.” [BBC, 7/11/2007]