London – Six men plotted to kill London subway and bus passengers with bombs made from hydrogen peroxide and flour two weeks after suicide bombers killed 52 commuters in the city, a prosecutor told a jury Monday.
No one was killed in the attempted bombings of three subway trains and a bus on July 21, 2005, because the devices failed to explode.
“We say that the failure of these bombs to explode owed nothing to the intentions of the defendants. It was simply the good fortune of the traveling public that this day they were spared,” prosecutor Nigel Sweeney said in outlining the government’s case. “This case is concerned with an extremist Muslim plot, the ultimate objective of which was to carry out a number of murders and suicide bombings.”
The men, who are largely of East African descent, have pleaded not guilty to charges of plotting to bomb London’s transport network two weeks after suicide attackers killed 52 commuters in the city on July 7, 2005.
Muktar Said Ibrahim, 28; Ramzi Mohamed, 25; Yassin Omar, 26; Manfu Asiedu, 33; Adel Yahya, 24; and Hussain Osman, 28 – all from London – deny charges of conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to cause explosions.
Sweeney said Osman had told police the bombs were “a deliberate hoax in order to make a political point” and were not intended to kill. But Sweeney said forensic scientists had tested the mixture, and “in every experiment this mixture has exploded.”
The explosives were packed in plastic tubs, with screws, bolts and other pieces of metal taped on the outside as shrapnel, the prosecutor said.
