3 British men convicted in terrorist bomb plot

A London jury found Irfan Naseer, 31, and Irfan Khalid and Ashik Ali, both 27, guilty of being central figures in the foiled plot to explode knapsack bombs in crowded areas — attacks potentially deadlier than the July 7, 2005 explosions on subway trains and a bus which killed 52 commuters. Judge Richard Henriques told the men — who had been arrested in September 2011 — they will all face life in prison when sentences are imposed in April or May for plotting a major terrorist attack in Birmingham, a city of roughly 1 million people located 120 miles (nearly 200 kilometers) northwest of London. "You were seeking to recruit a team of somewhere between six and eight suicide bombers to carry out a spectacular bombing campaign, one which would create an anniversary along the lines of 7/7 or 9/11," he told them after the jury reached its verdict. "It's clear that you were planning a terrorist outrage in Birmingham." He addressed Naseer directly, calling him a "highly skilled bomb maker and explosives expert" who had tried to persuade his colleagues that it was "far preferable" to launch a terror attack inside Britain rather than fighting jihad abroad. Prosecutors said the men, fired up by the sermons of a U.S.-born al-Qaida preacher, hoped to cause carnage on a mass scale. Their plot was undone by mishaps with money and logistics, and ended in a police counterterrorism swoop in 2011.