The FINANCIAL — A judge has sentenced the ringleader of a plot to bring down trans-Atlantic planes with liquid explosives to a minimum 40 years in jail. Three British terrorists planned to blow up at least seven transatlantic flights from London, murdering more than 1,500 people.
Abdulla Ahmed Ali, Assad Sarwar and Tanvir Hussain were found guilty last week of conspiracy to murder by detonating liquid bombs on airliners flying from Britain to North America, Guardian reported. Justice Henriques ordered Ali, the self-confessed leader of the plot, to serve at least 40 years in prison. Sarwar, 29, was given a minimum sentence of 36 years and Hussain, 28, a minimum of 32 years.
Henriques said the men were guilty of "the most grave and wicked conspiracy ever proven within this jurisdiction", the same source gives information."The intention was to perpetrate a terrorist outrage that would stand alongside the events of September 11 2001 in history."
A fourth man, Umar Islam, 31, was found guilty of conspiracy to murder, a charge not explicitly linked to airlines. The judge sentenced him to at least 22 years in jail before he is eligible for release, according to CNN. British prosecutors called the plot "calculated and sophisticated" and said it could have killed hundreds or even thousands of people.
"These men wanted to bring down several aircraft in a short space of time, indiscriminately killing hundreds of innocent people — perhaps more if they'd succeeded in activating their devices while over cities," Sue Hemming, head of the Crown Prosecution Service Counter Terrorism Division, said last week when they were convicted, the same source reported. "This was a calculated and sophisticated plot to create a terrorist event of global proportions and the jury concluded that Ali, Sarwar and Hussain knew what the target was," she said in a statement.
The al Qaida-inspired terror cell planned to detonate home-made liquid bombs on flights bound for major North American cities, as Mail Online gives information. Ali, of Walthamstow, east London, was found guilty along with Sarwar and Hussain last week at Woolwich Crown Court of conspiracy to murder on a mass scale following the largest-ever counter-terrorism operation in the UK.
According to Guardian, the bombs would have bypassed airport security, and tests by government scientists showed they were capable of blowing a hole in the skin of an aircraft.
The same source reported that the investigation and trials are estimated to have cost £35m. Uncovering and ultimately destroying the cell, based in east London and High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, was the biggest counter-terrorism operation in UK history, involving hundreds of police officers and MI5 agents.
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