Bomb plot jury offered majority verdict

The jury in the trial of eight men accused of plotting to blow up transatlantic passenger jets has been offered a majority verdict option.

The direction from Mr Justice Calvert-Smith came as jurors were spending their 11th day considering verdicts following the four-and-a-half-month trial at the high-security Woolwich Crown Court in south east London.

The eight men, who are all Muslims, face two charges of conspiracy to murder between January 1 and August 11, 2006, with one charge specifying that the attacks would involve the detonation of improvised explosive devices on transatlantic passenger aircraft.

Prosecutors say the gang planned to smuggle the home-made liquid bottle bombs disguised as soft drinks on board planes flying from Heathrow to North America.

The jury was told the devices were to be detonated by suicide bombers, causing mid-air carnage.

Giving evidence in their defence during the trial, Abdulla Ahmed Ali, 27, and Assad Sarwar, 28, said they just wanted to highlight injustices against Muslims in Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon.

Ali, from Walthamstow, east London, admitted he considered exploding a device at the Houses of Parliament or Heathrow Airport's Terminal 3 - but only as a publicity stunt protesting against British foreign policy.

He claimed martyrdom videos recorded by six of the defendants were a hoax to be used as part of an internet documentary.

Ali; Sarwar, of High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire; Tanvir Hussain, 27, of Leyton, east London; Ibrahim Savant, 27, of Stoke Newington, north London; Arafat Waheed Khan, 27, of Walthamstow; Waheed Zaman, 24, of Walthamstow and Umar Islam, 30, of Plaistow, east London, admit conspiring to commit public nuisance by distributing al-Qaeda-style videos threatening suicide bomb attacks in Britain.

Mohammed Gulzar, 27, of Barking, east London, denies all the charges.

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