Four men admit London bomb plot

2 Feb 2012, 7:50 am   -   Source: AAP

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Four British men have pleaded guilty to involvement in an al-Qaeda-inspired plot to bomb the London Stock Exchange.

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Four British men have pleaded guilty to involvement in an al-Qaeda-inspired plot to bomb the London Stock Exchange.

The men were among nine defendants facing trial in London on Wednesday over an alleged plot to attack the exchange and several other high-profile targets in December 2010. All had initially pleaded not guilty to all the charges against them.

But on Wednesday four of the defendants pleaded guilty at Woolwich Crown Court to involvement in the stock exchange plot, and the five other British citizens to lesser charges.

The suspects, aged between 20 and 30, were arrested in London, Cardiff and Stoke-on-Trent, in what police called the biggest anti-terrorism raid in two years.

Prosecutors said they planned to send mail bombs to various targets leading up to Christmas 2010 and had discussed launching a "Mumbai-style" atrocity - referring to the bomb blasts that killed 166 people in India's financial centre in 2008.

The nine defendants were accused of agreeing on targets, discussing materials and methods, and researching files "containing practical instruction for a terrorist attack".

A hand-written target list found at one of the defendant's homes listed the names and addresses of London Lord Mayor Boris Johnson, two rabbis, the US embassy and the stock exchange.

Mohammed Chowdhury, 21, Shah Rahman, 28, Gurukanth Desai, 30, and Abdul Miah, 25, all admitted preparing for acts of terrorism by planning to plant an improvised explosive device in the toilets of the stock exchange.

The other five defendants admitted attending planning meetings, fundraising for terrorism or possessing copies of the al-Qaeda magazine Inspire.

They will be sentenced next week.

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