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| Britain |
| 3 men charged over scouting 7/7 targets |
| 2008-04-11 |
| The first three men to be charged in connection with the July 7, 2005 London suicide bombings appeared in court on Thursday, accused of scouting for targets. Seven months before the bombings, two of them visited the London Eye, the Natural History Museum and the London Aquarium, prosecutors alleged. Muhammad Shakil, 31, Sadeer Saleem, 27, and Waheed Ali, 24, all shared common beliefs with the bombers, who committed “appalling acts of terrorism” on the British capital, Kingston Crown Court in Surrey was told. The bombers, Muhammad Sidique Khan, Shehzad Tanweer, Jermaine Lindsay and Hasib Hussain, killed 52 people in co-ordinated morning rush hour attacks on three underground trains and a bus. He said that in December 2004 the group travelled to London where they undertook a reconnaissance of potential targets over two days. They travelled with one of the bombers, Hussain, and later met up with another, Lindsay, but later denied it was a sinister trip. “Rather it is their case that the purpose of their journey was to enable Waheed Ali to visit his sister in east London,” he told the court. “Further, Sadeer Saleem and Muhammad Shakil accept that they visited the Natural History Museum, the London Eye and the London Aquarium, but maintain that they did so for purely social reasons.” Flewitt said the locations the group visited “bore a striking similarity” to the targets three of the bombers later identified during a hostile reconnaissance two weeks before the bombings. Flewitt said the group admitted they knew the bombers but maintained their friendship was innocent and that they did not know about the plans to bomb the capital. |
| Posted by:Fred |