British jury finds 3 men guilty in bombing plot

Abdulla Ahmed Ali, 27, is among three men found guilty Monday in London of conspiracy to murder in a terrorist bombing campaign in 2006. This image was taken from video footage shown during the trial.

? Three British Muslims with ties to Pakistan were found guilty Monday of conspiracy to murder in a terrorist bombing campaign but jurors failed to reach a verdict on whether they plotted to blow up multiple trans-Atlantic airliners with liquid explosives disguised as soft drinks.

The failure to get convictions on the more serious charges was a major setback to the British government, which has struggled to put suspected terrorists behind bars with intelligence from multiple countries.

Last month, government prosecutors failed to convict three other men of helping to plan the deadly London transit bombings of 2005 – the worst attack on Britain’s capital since World War II.

In Monday’s decision, Abdulla Ahmed Ali and co-conspirators Assad Sarwar and Tanvir Hussain were convicted of trying to make a bomb out of hydrogen peroxide.

But the jury struggled to find enough evidence to support prosecutors’ claims that the men planned suicide attacks targeting passenger jets flying from London to major North American cities.

The three will be sentenced at a later date.

The men were arrested on Aug. 10, 2006 – a date that would go down in history as the day when air travel changed dramatically.

Airports in the United States and Europe ground to a halt with hundreds of flights canceled over security concerns. Planes were stuck on runways for hours. Tempers flared as passengers lined up to surrender carry-on items under new security precautions that severely restricted the quantity of liquids in their luggage.

Prosecutors said they would consider a request for retrial of the three men. The jury failed to reach verdicts Monday on four other men facing the same charges – Ibrahim Savant, Arafat Waheed Khan, Waheed Zaman and Umar Islam. Prosecutors would consider a retrial for them as well.

An eighth man, Mohammed Gulzar, was found not guilty.

Prosecutor Peter Wright said during the trial that the men planned to attack United Airlines, American Airlines and Air Canada flights at the height of the 2006 summer vacation season.

British and US intelligence officers said the alleged plot was uncovered during a marathon investigation that led to a number of different sites including a bomb factory in eastern London, British woodlands where chemicals had been dumped, Japan, Mauritius, South Africa and Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas where conversations were intercepted.

Police swooped down and arrested two dozen suspects in dawn raids across Britain on Aug. 10, 2006.

A lawyer for Ali, a 27-year-old computer-systems engineering graduate and the alleged ringleader of the group, insisted last month he was guilty only of planning a childish stunt to make a political point.

Ali told the court they planned to set off a small bomb at a site such as the Houses of Parliament or Heathrow Airport to advertise a propaganda documentary protesting the West’s actions in Afghanistan and Iraq. He denied intending to kill anyone.

“It was childish, it was stupid, but it is not murder,” the lawyer, Nadine Radford, said during a July hearing.

Ali, Sarwar and Hussain pleaded guilty to conspiring to cause explosions. All eight defendants denied conspiracy to murder.

Prosecutors claim the liquid explosives plot to blow up airlines had probably been inspired by both the Sept. 11 attacks and the July 2005 London transit bombings, although they do not allege the men had direct links to al-Qaida.

The prosecutor Wright told the court that police found a computer memory stick in Ali’s pocket with details of flights from London’s Heathrow Airport to Chicago, New York, Boston, Denver, Miami and Montreal.

Prosecutors also say the men had stockpiled enough hydrogen peroxide to create 20 liquid bombs, although they did not create any viable explosives, and no date had been chosen for the attacks.

Ali had visited Pakistan in early 2006, as had Hussain, Khan, and Sarwar. Security officials said Sarwar flew to Islamabad in June 2006 and likely discussed final details of the plot with al-Qaida organizers.