LONDON — Jurors convicted three young Britons on Monday of conspiracy to commit murder in a trial involving an alleged plot to blow up airplanes bound for North America, but they acquitted the accused ringleader and failed to reach a verdict on four other suspects.
The jury did not reach a verdict on a central allegation of the case: that the suspects planned to explode liquid bombs on seven transatlantic flights. Investigators have called the plot Al Qaeda's most ambitious since Sept. 11, 2001. The alleged plot resulted in worldwide restrictions on liquids in carry-on luggage.
Nevertheless, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith declared that law enforcement officials had "saved countless lives" by disrupting the group on the basis of surveillance conducted by British, U.S. and Pakistani investigators. She welcomed the guilty verdicts for Abdullah Ahmed Ali, 27; Assad Sarwar, 28, and Tanvir Hussain, 27, all of Pakistani descent.
But other officials expressed disappointment, and prosecutors must now decide whether to retry four suspects, who although not convicted Monday remain in jail because they pleaded guilty to lesser charges of conspiring to cause a public nuisance. Prosecutors also have the option of seeking to retry all seven on the charge of targeting planes.
The jury deliberated for about 56 hours with time off for August vacations. The evidence included clandestine video and intercepts of the suspects in a hide-out as they filmed "martyrdom" statements, worked with explosives components, singled out flights and discussed bypassing airport security, prosecutors said.
Defendants allegedly plotted to sneak the liquid explosives aboard planes in sports drinks and other containers, and then assemble and ignite bombs that would explode when the planes were over the ocean.
The jury acquitted the alleged ringleader of the plot, Mohammed Gulzar, 27, who did not make a suicide video. Prosecutors accused him of being a senior operative who arrived from Pakistan via South Africa to take charge of the attack in its final stages.
Jurors found that Ali, Sarwar and Hussain conspired to bomb "unknown" targets, apparently based on evidence that they scouted refineries and other sites around London in addition to flights bound for the United States and Canada.
"Not to get a conviction on plotting to murder on airplanes is a bit hard to swallow," said a British official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case publicly. "There were timetables, suicide videos, the known preference for Al Qaeda to focus on airplanes.
