Jury goes out in fertiliser "bomb plot" case

By Michael Holden

LONDON (Reuters) - A jury trying the case of seven Britons accused of plotting bomb attacks on targets ranging from the Ministry of Sound nightclub to the Bluewater shopping centre retired to consider its verdict on Friday.

The year-long trial at the Old Bailey has heard that the gang, some said to have links to al Qaeda, planned to use 600 kg (1,300 lb) of ammonium nitrate fertiliser to make explosives for use in the bombings.

Prosecutors said the men had only needed to decide on a target when they were arrested in 2004 before carrying out what would have been the first homegrown attack by Islamist militants.

Police swooped on the suspects about 16 months before four British Islamists carried out suicide bombings on London's transport system in July 2005, killing 52 commuters.

The suspects, Omar Khyam, his brother Shujah Mahmood, Waheed Mahmood, Anthony Garcia, Jawar Akbar and Salahuddin Amin deny conspiring with Canadian Mohammed Momin Khawaja to cause an explosion likely to endanger life.

Garcia, Khyam and Hussain are also charged with possessing an article for terrorism -- the fertiliser. Khyam and Mahmood are also accused of having aluminium powder -- an ingredient in explosives. They deny all charges.

The main prosecution witness in the case was Mohammed Babar, a Pakistan-born American who has admitted to terrorism-related offences in New York. He said he was the men's accomplice and had helped get materials for the detonators.

Babar told the jury he had met some of those involved in the suspected conspiracy, dubbed the "British Bomb Plot" by U.S. officials, at training camps in Pakistan.