Mohammed Shakil, Sadeer Saleem, and Waheed Ali, were acquitted of conspiring to detonate bombs by a London jury today, a court official said. Ali and Shakil were convicted of a lesser charge of planning to attend terrorist training camps in Pakistan, London’s Metropolitan Police said in a statement.

Prosecutors claimed the men helped the four suicide bombers who carried out the deadliest attacks in London since World War II choose their targets. The bombers exploded homemade devices strapped to their bodies on three underground trains and a bus during the city’s morning rush hour killing 52 people.

“The media is quick to write about arrests, but less quick to write about acquittals,’’ Tahir Shah, a spokesman for the Muslim Public Affairs Committee, said in a telephone interview. He said the men will still have a “cloud’’ hanging over them.

The prosecution claimed that the three men acquitted today helped Mohammed Siddique Khan, Shehzad Tanweer, Hasib Hussain and Jermaine Lindsay select sites to attack. They traveled to London on December 16, 2004, with Hussain, who later set off a bomb in London’s Russell Square.

The men are British Muslims who grew up near Leeds, England. They all deny wrongdoing, saying that they were ignorant of the bomb plot and had no hostile intent when they visited the U.K. capital.

Retrial

The trio was originally tried in 2008 and a jury failed to reach a verdict.

“Although there was no direct evidence that these men were involved in the terrible events of 7/7, we felt there was sufficient evidence to show they were involved in reconnaissance and planning for an attack of some kind,’’ Sue Hemming, Head of the Crown Prosecution Service Counter Terrorism Division, said in an e-mailed statement.

Imran Khan, lawyer for Shakil and Saleem, and Ali’s lawyer, Gareth Peirce, didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The prosecution alleged that while in London the group met with Lindsay and searched the capital for targets. Lindsay detonated a suicide bomb on a subway leaving Kings Cross station.

Prosecutors alleged Shakil and Ali were on their way to a terrorist training camp when they were arrested. They will be sentenced tomorrow, the court official said. Saleem was released, the official said.

Source: Bloomberg

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