Court clears three men of plotting London bombings

Three Britons were cleared yesterday of helping to plot the London suicide bombings in July 2005, the first prosecution over the attacks which killed 52 people.

Mohammed Shakil, Sadeer Saleem and Waheed Ali were accused of scouting the city for possible targets with two of the four young British Muslims who detonated homemade devices in coordinated attacks on three underground trains and a bus.

Prosecutors said the three men were friends of the bombers, Mohammed Sidique Khan, Shehzad Tanweer, Jermaine Lindsay and Hasib Hussain, attending the same Mosque and gym in the town of Beeston, northern England.

Although they were not directly involved in making the bombs or carrying out the attacks, detectives believed the men had helped plan them.

A jury last year failed to reach a verdict against the men and, yesterday, Mr Ali, 25, Mr Shakil, 32, and Mr Saleem, 28, were found not guilty of conspiracy to cause explosions at a retrial at London's Kingston Crown Court, the Press Association reported. But Mr Ali and Mr Shakil were convicted of a second charge of conspiracy to attend a place used for terrorist training. Prosecutors said they were planning to go to a camp in Pakistan when police arrested them in March 2007.

"Thankfully a jury of ordinary people have unanimously been able to see this case for what it was - guilty by association," Mr Saleem said in a statement read by his lawyer outside court.

"In my view, the police wanted somebody, anybody, to pay for the murder of 52 people."

Detectives found that about seven months before the bombings, Shakil, Saleem and Ali spent two days in London with Hussain and Lindsay, visiting tourist attractions such as the London Eye, the Natural History Museum and the London Aquarium, and locations similar to ones attacked on July 7. But the defendants argued their trip was to allow Mr Ali to visit his sister and take in some tourist attractions.

The court also heard how in November 2004, Khan, the ringleader of the plot, recorded a farewell video for his baby daughter before heading to Afghanistan where he introduced two of the bombers and Mr Ali as his daughter's "uncles".