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| Britain |
| UK court clears three of plotting London bombs |
| 2009-04-29 |
| [Al Arabiya Latest] Three Britons were cleared on Tuesday of helping to plot the deadly London suicide bombings in July 2005 in the first prosecution over the attacks which killed 52 people and left more than 700 injured. Waheed Ali, 25, Mohammed Shakil, 32, and 28-year-old Sadeer Salem were accused of having carried out a two-day reconnaissance mission by visiting various tourist sites in London in the months leading up the attacks on three underground trains and a bus. A jury last year failed to reach a verdict against the men, who were found not guilty of conspiracy to cause explosions at Tuesday's retrial at London's Kingston Crown Court, the Press Association reported. Prosecutors had said the three men were friends of the bombers, Mohammed Sidique Khan, Shehzad Tanweer, Jermaine Lindsay and Hasib Hussain. The men attended the same mosque and gym in the tightly-knit town of Beeston, in northern England, prosecutors said. Although they were not directly involved in making the bombs or carrying out the attacks, detectives believed the men had helped plan the attacks. Ali and Shakil were convicted of a second charge of conspiracy to attend a place used for terrorist training. Prosecutors said they were planning to go to a camp in Pakistan when police arrested them in March 2007. The court heard that the investigation into the bombings -- the largest ever carried out by London police -- discovered links between the men in mobile phone records, fingerprints connecting them to the bomb-factory in Beeston, family videos and surveillance. Detectives found that about seven months before the bombings, Shakil, Saleem and Ali spent two days in London with Hussain and Lindsay, visiting tourist attractions such as the London Eye, the Natural History Museum and the London Aquarium. They also visited locations similar to ones attacked on July 7 and detectives said the trip, the key element of the prosecution case, was part of preparations for attacks on the capital. But the defendants argued the trip was to allow Ali to visit his sister and take in some tourist attractions. The court also heard how in Nov. 2004, Khan, the ringleader of the July plot, recorded a farewell video for his baby daughter in 2004 before heading off on a mission to Afghanistan where he expected to die, prosecutors said. Police have always maintained that the bombers had assistance from other people with links to al-Qaeda as they would not have had the technical expertise to construct the hydrogen peroxide-based bombs themselves. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #1 Prosecutors said they were planning to go to a camp in Pakistan when police arrested them in March 2007. Visiting "tourist attractions" in Pakistan as well....no doubt. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2009-04-29 09:39 |