Five Locked Up for Aiding Terrorist

Conspirators who helped Shepherd’s Bush Bomber jailed

Five men who knew the July 21 bombers have been jailed after being found guilty of helping the bombers escape after their suicide bids went wrong.

The group provided safe houses and passports for the gang as well as clothing and food as they hid from the police.
Wahbi Mohammed, 25, Abdul Sherif, 30, Siraj Ali, 33, Muhedin Ali, 29, and Ismail Abdurahman, 25, were convicted of a total of 22 charges of failing to disclose information about terrorism and assisting an offender following a four-month trial at Kingston Crown Court in South London.

Abdul Sherif, who was jailed for 10 years, is the brother of Hussain Osman, the Shepherd’s Bush bomber.
He later gave Osman his passport, which the bomber used to flee to Italy. Abdurahman, who gave sanctuary to Osman immediately after the failed attacks, was jailed for 10 years, and Ali, a friend of Osman and the Mohammed brothers, hid extremist tapes belonging to Osman and Mohammed’s suicide note.

He was jailed for seven years. Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, who led the hunt for the bombers, described the failure of Mohammed and Siraj Ali to alert the authorities to the 21/7 plot as "despicable". All five men, originally from Africa, have leave to remain in the UK but are likely to be deported when they are eventually released.

Three of the men were brothers of the bombers and two were found guilty of having prior knowledge of the events of July 21.
One, Wahbi Mohammed, 25, was said to be the custodian of the bombers’ missing suicide video which he was to deliver to the media once the attacks had wrought destruction on London.
On July 21, when the bombs failed to go off and the terrorists were forced to go on the run, Wahbi and four others helped them escape, the court heard.

There was a desperate rush to get the video camera to Hussain Osman, the Shepherd’s Bush bomber, as the net closed.
He had managed to get his brother’s passport and, after lying low at a friend’s flat in Kennington, South London, made his escape to Rome on the Eurostar.

Osman took with him the video camera, which was found, without the memory card, when he was arrested eight days after the failed attacks.

All that was left of the video was a banner and headband with the words "There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his messenger" which police found when they raided a flat in Dalgarno Gardens on the same day.

February 8, 2008