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Four Islamist militants who plotted to kill dozens of people on London's public transport network two weeks after the July 7 bombings were today jailed for life.

Failed July 21 suicide bombers Muktar Said Ibrahim, Yassin Omar, Ramzi Mohammed and Hussain Osman will each serve a minimum of 40 years for conspiracy to murder.

They were sentenced by judge Mr Justice Fulford QC at Woolwich crown court, in south-east London.

On Monday, the four were found guilty of attempting to blow themselves and fellow passengers up on three tube trains and a bus.

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The attacks had been designed to mirror the events of two weeks earlier, when four suicide bombers killed themselves and 52 other people on the capital's transport network.

The trial heard how the two attacks appeared to be linked, with Ibrahim, the July 21 ringleader, having been in Pakistan at the same time as two of the July 7 bombers.

Although both sets of attackers used similar home made hydrogen peroxide and chapatti flour bombs, which were carried in rucksacks, those used on July 21 failed to fully detonate and nobody was injured.

Ibrahim, 29, of Stoke Newington, north London, 26-year-old Omar, of New Southgate, north London, Mohammed, 25, of North Kensington, west London, and 28-year-old Osman, of no fixed address, were found guilty of conspiracy to murder after a six month trial.

The jury was discharged yesterday after failing to reach a decision on two other defendants, Manfo Kwaku Asiedu and Adel Yahya, both of whom deny conspiracy to murder.

Mr Asiedu, 34, of no fixed address, and 24-year-old Mr Yahya, of Tottenham, north London, will face a retrial, prosecutors said today.

The four convicted men were dedicated terrorists who, when caught, told "blatant, ridiculous" lies about the plot, the UK's leading counterterrorism police officer said yesterday.

"This was no spur of the moment plan," Deputy Assistant Constable Peter Clarke, the head of the Metropolitan police's counterterrorism command, said. "It had been hatched over several months.

"They failed to set off their bombs - not through want of trying - but no one will forget the impact or the consequences of what they did, coming just two weeks after 52 innocent people had been murdered by other terrorists."

Ibrahim, who insisted the plot was meant as a non-lethal protest against the Iraq war, grew up in Eritrea and came to the UK in 1990. He attempted to blow up a bus in Shoreditch, east London.

Police and intelligence agencies have faced criticism over the fact that Ibrahim led the plot despite having come to their attention several times beforehand.

At various points in 2004, he was photographed by surveillance officers while on a camping trip in the Lake District, was arrested for distributing extremist Islamist literature and was stopped by Special Branch officers on his way to Pakistan.

Somalia-born Omar tried to detonate his bomb on a tube train near Warren Street station, in central London. It was his north London flat that was used by the plotters as a base in which to make the bombs.

Mohammed, also originally from Somalia, claimed he had only been forced into the plot at the last minute.

He attempted to blow up a carriage on a tube train near Stockwell station, in south London, and was pictured on CCTV footage turning so that his bomb faced a woman and her nine-month-old son before trying to set it off.

Osman, who was born in Ethiopia and came to the UK via Italy, tried to detonate his bomb close to Shepherd's Bush station, in west London.

*pat*pat*

Got the new Crowded House album in here if you're feeling homesick. How goes it?

crowded house is for fags

ahh the return of the warm-n-fuzzy playlouder spirit.

ho ho

where is luke

is it wikipedia day

Wikipedia day? Uh?

Orange you mean? Oui!

We're off to Serbia tomorrow. Huuzah!

amazing

I wish I was off to Serbia