Airliner Bomb Plot Seven to Face a Retrial
By SAM MARSDEN
SEVEN men accused of plotting to blow up transatlantic airliners will face a retrial, the Crown Prosecution Service has said.
Prosecutors argued in a five-month trial at Woolwich Crown Court, London, that the men intended to launch a wave of suicide bombings on flights from Heathrow to north America.
But a jury failed to reach verdicts this week on the charge that the defendants conspired to commit murder on aircraft.
The Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Ken Macdonald QC, said in a statement: “I have carefully considered this case with the head of my counter-terrorism division and with counsel.
“I have today concluded that the prosecution should apply to retry each of these defendants on every count that the recently discharged jury failed to agree upon. This will include a count that each defendant conspired to detonate improvised explosive devices on transatlantic passenger aircraft.”
The men are Abdulla Ahmed Ali, 27; Assad Sarwar, 28; Tanvir Hussain, 27; Ibrahim Savant, 27; Arafat Waheed Khan, 27; Waheed Zaman, 24, and Umar Islam, 30.
They will all be retried on a charge of conspiring to murder “persons unknown by the detonation of improvised explosive devices on board transatlantic passenger aircraft”, between January 1 and August 11 2006.
Four of them – Savant, Khan, Zaman and Islam – will also be tried again on a general charge of conspiracy to murder.
The jury convicted Ali, Sarwar and Hussain of this charge by a majority of 10 to two, but could not agree on the other men.
An eighth man, Mohammed Gulzar, 27, was cleared of all charges and cannot face a retrial.
The fallout from the trial saw anti-terror agencies in both the UK and US face questions over how the investigation was conducted.
Some experts suggest that the arrest in Pakistan of a terror suspect linked to the alleged plotters – reportedly at America’s request – forced British authorities to move sooner than planned.
Air travellers were thrown into chaos after police swooped on the alleged east London-based bomb plotters on August 9, 2006.
New rules introduced the following day resulted in hundreds of cancelled flights and queues at Britain’s airports.
Virgin Atlantic and British Airways called for a review of restrictions on carrying liquids in hand luggage, but the government has said they must be maintained.
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