Two of the men, Naseer and Khalid,
traveled to Pakistan twice for training, including a two-month stint at an al-Qaeda facility. They recorded martyrdom videos before returning to the UK in 2011, where they recruited Ali and experimented together in building bombs.
LONDON (JPost) - Three British Islamists were found guilty on Thursday of plotting a campaign of bombings in crowded areas in an attempt to create what one of them called "another 9/11."
According to the London-based Jewish Chronicle they were planning to target a synagogue.
During the trial the court heard a taped conversation in which one of the convicted men told a fourth man, who was not on trial: “Even if we can’t make a bomb... get guns yeah from the black geezers, Africans and charge into some like synagogue [sic] or charge into different places."
A jury at Woolwich Crown Court in south London convicted Irfan Naseer, 31, Irfan Khalid, 27, and Ashik Ali, 27, of a total of 12 counts of committing acts in preparation for a terrorist attack between December 2010 and September 2011.
The trio were central figures in a plot to blow up eight rucksack bombs in a mass suicide attack as well as detonating bombs on timers in crowded places. Their targets remain unidentified.
The court heard they had also considered welding knife blades to a truck and ramming it into a crowd of people.
"The evidence we put to the court showed the defendants discussing with awe and admiration the attacks of 9/11 and 7/7," said specialist counter-terrorism prosecutor Karen Jones in a statement after the verdict.
The name "7/7" is given in Britain to the attacks on London's public transport by Islamist militants on July 7, 2005, which killed more than 50 people.
"These terrorists wanted to do something bigger, speaking of how 7/7 had 'gone a bit wrong'," Jones said in her statement.
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