The Associated Press
Related: London police foil major terror plot
LONDON — A judge today sentenced four men he described as al Qaeda-inspired plotters to life in prison for trying to bomb London’s transit system in July 2005, two weeks after suicide bombers killed 52 commuters.
Muktar Said Ibrahim, 29; Yassin Omar, 26; Ramzi Mohammed, 25; and Hussain Osman, 28, must spend at least 40 years in jail before becoming eligible for parole, said Judge Adrian Fulford. A jury on Monday found them guilty of conspiracy to murder in a plot to detonate explosives-filled knapsacks on three subway trains and a bus.
The bombs failed to explode, and no one was injured.
The judge said that if the bombs had gone off, “at least 50 people would have died, hundreds of people would have been wounded, thousands would have had their lives permanently damaged, disfigured or otherwise, whether they were Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, agnostic or atheist.”
He said that the July 7 and July 21 plots “were both part of an al Qaeda-inspired and controlled sequence of attacks.”
Two other suspects, Manfo Kwaku Asiedu, 34, and Adel Yahya, 24, will be retried because the jury failed to reach a verdict.