Three guilty of airline bomb plot
				
			
		
		
    		
		
	
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				(L to R) Tanvir Hussain, Abdulla Ahmed Ali and Assad Sarwar were found guilty
			
			
		
		
	
	
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Three men have been found guilty of
plotting to kill thousands of people by blowing up planes flying from
London to America with home-made liquid bombs.
A Woolwich
Crown Court jury convicted Abdulla Ahmed Ali, 28, Tanvir Hussain, 28,
and Assad Sarwar, 29, of conspiring to activate bombs disguised as
drinks. 
Four other men were found not guilty of involvement in the suicide bomb plot. 
The arrests in August 2006 caused chaos to international aviation and prompted the current restrictions on liquids. 
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jury heard that at the time of his arrest, plot ringleader Ahmed Ali
had identified seven US and Canada-bound flights to blow up over the
Atlantic within a two-and-a-half-hour period. 
They were flights
from London's Heathrow airport to San Francisco, Washington, New York,
Chicago, Toronto and Montreal. Had the planes taken to the air with
bombers on board, there would have been little chance of saving them. 
	
	
		
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			This was a calculated and sophisticated plot to create a terrorist event of global proportions
		
	
	
	
			
			
			
	Sue Hemming
 Crown Prosecution Service
			
			
			
			                            
			
			
			
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Liquid bomb plot: what happened
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The e-mails sent by the bombers
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Airline trial: The verdicts
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His "quartermaster", Sarwar, had secured bomb ingredients at his
home and in woods in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire. A flat in the
Walthamstow area of east London became the bomb factory. 
There
the men put together a special home-made mixture of chemicals that they
planned to take onto planes in ordinary sports drinks bottles stored
within hand luggage. Ahmed Ali, of Walthamstow, Hussain, of Leyton,
east London, and Sarwar had been found guilty previously of a
conspiracy to murder involving liquid bombs. 
The jury in that
first trial could not decide whether their plans extended to detonating
the devices on planes. But a second jury was convinced. 
The
plot became the biggest terror investigation in the UK and intelligence
officers believe it was directed by al-Qaeda figures in Pakistan. 
The BBC understands that the key contact for the plotters was a British man, Rashid Rauf, now thought to be dead. 
'Daring plot'
Security
officials on both sides of the Atlantic believe the men wanted to kill
thousands in the air and possibly more on the ground in a wave of
attacks causing more devastation - and political fall-out - than the 11
September attacks.