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This is an archive article published on January 16, 2007

Trial begins of six Britons for plotting London bombings

Six Britons plotted to attack London’s transport system in July 2005 using bombs carried in rucksacks packed with metal to cause maximum injury, the prosecutor in their trial said on Monday.

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Six Britons plotted to attack London’s transport system in July 2005 using bombs carried in rucksacks packed with metal to cause maximum injury, the prosecutor in their trial said on Monday.

“This case is concerned with an extremist Muslim plot, (the) objective of which was to carry out a number of murderous suicide bombings on the transport system in London,” chief prosecutor Nigel Sweeney told the court.

The six men are charged with planning to set off explosives on 3 underground trains and a bus on July 21, sparking panic in a city reeling from four suicide bombings a fortnight earlier that killed 52 commuters and injured about 700.

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The trial, which is taking place at the high-security Woolwich Crown Court in east London, is one of the most high-profile anti-terrorism cases in Britain.

The deadly attacks on July 7 were the first by suicide bombers in Western Europe and the government has since increased security to prevent a repeat by home-grown Islamist militants, angered by British foreign policy.

Sweeney said the 9th-floor flat of defendant Yassin Hassin Omar in north London was the bomb-making factory. The explosive chemical was triacetone triperoxide (TATP) and it was held in buckets surrounded by screws, tacks, washers and nuts.

The main suspects on trial— all of whom are originally from Africa and in their mid to late 20s— were apprehended just over a week after the failed attacks. Muktah Said Ibrahim, Manfo Kwaku Asiedu, Hussein Osman, Yassin Hassin Omar, Ramzi Mohammed and Adel Yahya are all charged with conspiracy to murder.

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