By IRNA
London : Four men, sentenced each to serve at least 40 years in prison, sought permission Wednesday to appeal against their convictions over a copycat bomb plot, two weeks after 56 were killed in the 7/7 bombings on London’s transport system in 2005.
Muktar Ibrahim, 29, Yassin Omar, 26, Ramzi Mohammed, 25, and Hussain Osman, 28, were found guilty last July of conspiracy to murder after failing to detonate explosives on three Tube trains and a bus in the British capital on July 21, 2005.
But speaking for the defendants, George Carter-Stephenson said the four men maintained the events were ‘an elaborate hoax designed to protest against and draw attention to Britain’s role in the attack upon and occupation of Iraq’.
The explosive devices, which were carried in rucksacks, had been made to look realistic, but had flaws deliberately built into them ‘to ensure that the main charge of each of those devices would not detonate’, the BBC quoted Carter-Stephenson saying.
He also argued that the trial judge had ‘erred in law’ in several instances, including over Ibrahim’s right to legal advice and when he ruled Ibrahim’s lawyer could not ask questions or call evidence about a late confession from his co-accused Hussain Omar.
A fifth man, Manfo Kwaku Asiedu, who admitted conspiracy to cause explosions and was jailed in November for 33 years, is also seeking permission to appeal against his sentence, but his case is not expected to be heard until Thursday.
Sentencing the would-be bombers at Woolwich Crown Court in south London last July, the judge Mr Justice Fulford QC said the failed attacks were connected with the bombings in London two weeks earlier.
“What happened on July 7 in 2005 is of considerable relevance to this sentencing. I have no doubt that they were both part of an al- Qaeda-inspired and controlled sequence of attacks,” the judge said.