Thundered without an explosion

London bombers receive life sentences

Woolwich Crown Court, south-east London, yesterday sentenced four bombers to life imprisonment for attempting to detonate improvised explosive devices on London transport on 21 July 2005. Mukhtar Saeed Ibrahim, 29, Yasin Omar, 26, Ramzi Muhammad, 25, and Hussein Osman, 28, will spend at least 40 years in prison before they are eligible to apply for clemency. They are all from Africa - Ethiopia and Eritrea - who moved to the UK in search of a better life. Two already held British passports. Two more had permanent residence permits.

In preparation for the attack, they tried to copy the actions of another four suicide bombers who detonated homemade bombs on three London Underground trains and a bus on July 7, 2005, killing 52 people. Like their predecessors, the attackers put homemade bombs in their backpacks and dispersed to different areas of the city. The three boarded the metro trains, and Ibrahim took the bus. At a pre-agreed time, they launched their deadly payload. Fortunately, the fuses did not go off.

Soon the three were arrested in different cities of Great Britain; Hussein Osman managed to escape to Italy to his older brother. There he was detained by the Roman police and later handed over to the British authorities. Investigators have collected a huge amount of material evidence incriminating the accused of their terrorist intentions. A “bomb factory” was also found - Yasin Omar’s small council apartment in north London, which served as a place for the manufacture of explosive devices. The jury was shown seven hours of video footage detailing the defendants' movements before and after the attack.

The defense argued that the explosive devices were dummies and therefore the action did not pose any danger. The defendants allegedly tried to publicly demonstrate their disagreement with the continuation of the war in Iraq. However, according to public prosecutor Nigel Sweeney, it was a “well-planned attack of Islamic extremism” whose sole purpose was to “carry out deadly bombings on London transport”.

The jury could not reach a consensus on the guilt of two other defendants - Manfo Kwaki Asiedu and Adel Yahia. As a result, the current jury was dismissed. In the coming days, the prosecutor's office will decide whether to hold a new trial in their cases.

Most of all, the British public is concerned that, as it turned out during the investigation, even a year before the incident, the police suspected all these people of terrorism and even secretly filmed their training in a special training camp in the countryside. However, as a representative of Scotland Yard explained in court, there are not enough funds for constant surveillance of all suspicious persons and therefore “we have to select the most potentially dangerous.”

A similar situation seems to be developing now. Information leaked to the British press that several participants in the “Doctors’ Plot”, who were preparing terrorist attacks in London and Glasgow in June, had long been listed in the counterintelligence dossier. However, monitoring of them was stopped due to lack of funds. Prime Minister Gordon Brown has already promised to significantly increase the portion of the police budget dedicated to fighting terrorism.

Zurab NALBANDYAN, London