Britain's longest terror trial yields biggest success yet

But it also reveals that security services let two of the 7/7 bombers slip out of their net.

By Mark Rice-Oxley | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

from the May 1, 2007 edition

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LONDON - Britain notched up its biggest success yet in its efforts to crush a home-grown jihadi terrorist network when five British men with links to Al Qaeda were convicted Monday of a plot to replicate the carnage and destruction of 9/11 on British soil.

But satisfaction was tempered when it emerged from the trial that police had come across two of the 7/7 bombers during the operation – but let the men slip off the radar.

Analysts say the trial was not only the longest terrorism trial in British history, but also concerned the most ambitious terrorist plot yet thwarted. The five men had stored 600 kilograms of ammonium nitrate fertilizer to make bombs, and discussed plans to detonate them in a nightclub, a British Airways plane, the London Underground, and the country's largest shopping center.

"This is the longest ever terrorism trial in [Britain], and probably the biggest in terms of the explosives and the atrocities [the terrorists] intended to cause," says M. J. Gohel, a terrorism expert with the Asia-Pacific Foundation, a London-based intelligence think tank.

The planned attack was foiled in March 2004 by intercepted chatroom conversations, surveillance, and the discovery of the fertilizer in a west London depot. At that point, prosecutors said the men had the bomb capability and had only to decide on a target.

The five men convicted were Omar Khyam, Waheed Mahmood, Anthony Garcia, Jawad Akbar, and Salahuddin Amin. They were sentenced to life in prison. "You have betrayed this country that has given you every opportunity," said the judge, Sir Michael Astill.

Peter Clarke, the Metropolitan police's top counterterrorism officer, described the gang as "trained, dedicated, ruthless terrorists who were obviously probably planning to carry out an attack against the British public. "We heard them praising the attacks in Madrid, saying that there were no such things as innocent victims. They had to be stopped."

A key prosecution witness was Mohammed Babar, a Pakistan-born American who said he was an accomplice and had helped get materials to make the bombs. The men also had a Canadian accomplice, Mohammad Momin Khawaja. The jury deliberated for 27 days, a record in British criminal history

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