August 02, 2008	Saturday	Rajab 29, 1429

LONDON, Aug 1: Waheed Ali, 25, Sadeer Saleem, 28, and 32-year-old Mohammed Shakil, all presumably of Pakistani origin, were on Friday remanded in custody following the failure of the jury to reach a verdict in the case of the three men accused of helping the July 7 bombers.

They were the first people to be tried in connection with the 2005 attacks on London’s transport network, in which 52 people died.

The jury has been dismissed which means that no one has yet been convicted in connection with the deadliest terrorist attack in Britain’s history.

Ali, Saleem and Shakil grew up in Beeston, Leeds, attending the same mosques, gyms and community organisations as Mohammad Sidique Khan, Shehzad Tanweer and Hasib Hussain, three of the July 7 bombers.

They admitted holding extreme views and undertaking jihadi training in Pakistan. However, they played down the significance of the training, claiming a readiness to fight to protect Muslim lands was not the same as the readiness to kill innocent people in Britain.

“Cell site analysis” — which shows the location of a mobile phone when a call is made — demonstrated that all three as well as Hasib Hussain and the fourth bomber, Jermaine Lindsay, were in London on December 16 and 17, 2004, in areas bearing a “striking similarity” to where the suicide attacks would later take place.

The prosecution case rested on an alleged ‘hostile’ reconnaissance mission, exploring potential targets in London, carried out by the three men with two of the bombers in December 2004.

The prosecution told Kingston Crown Court that the trip was an “essential preparatory step to bring death and destruction to the heart of the United Kingdom”.

The defendants insisted they had been in London for “social reasons”, visiting the tourist attractions solely for sightseeing.