Seven men face bomb plot retrial

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Prosecutors argued in a five-month trial at Woolwich Crown Court, in London, that the men intended to launch a wave of suicide bombings on flights from Heathrow Airport 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 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. We shall be returning to court to make this application in due course."

The seven 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 between the same dates.

The jury convicted Ali, Sarwar and Hussain of this charge by a majority of 10 to two, but could not agree verdicts for the other men.

An eighth man, Mohammed Gulzar, 27, was cleared of all charges and cannot face a retrial.