Five Britons get life for Qaeda-style bomb plots

Militant-turned-informant Mohammed Junaid Babar, who had plotted to assassinate the Pakistani president, played a central role in convicting the five. The main prosecution witness in the year-long trial, dubbed the British bomb plot by US officials, Babar was born in Pakistan and moved to New York as a child. The September 11, 2001, attacks prompted him to act, though his mother was in one of the World Trade Centre towers during the attacks. She survived, and he decided to go to Afghanistan to fight the US forces. In Pakistan, he met some of the Britons who plotted to carry out the bombings.

The gang planned to use 600 kg of ammonium nitrate fertiliser to make explosives to be used in bombings in revenge for Britain’s support for the United States in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, prosecutors said.

Court papers, which could only be detailed after the trial, showed police observing the gang had established links between them and two of four British Islamists who later carried out suicide bombings in London on July 7, 2005, killing 52 people.

Spies had seen Mohammed Sidique Khan, suspected ringleader of the July 7 bombings, and accomplice Shehzad Tanweer with the men in the days leading up to their arrest but discounted them because they were not involved in the plot.

Opposition parties and survivors of the bombings demanded a public inquiry into the July 7 attacks in response to the news.

Counter-terrorism experts said the gang could have produced a “formidable weapon” more powerful than some of the devices used in recent devastating attacks in the world.

“It was the first time since 9/11 that British people were attempting to commit mass murder in the UK,” said one senior detective, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“The only sensible conclusion is that al-Qaeda does sit behind it,” he told reporters.