U.K. Subway Bomb Plot Trial Continues

Scotland Yard today released a videotape showing the alleged ringleader of the botched bombings of London Transit on July 21, 2005, Muktar Said Ibrahim, and an alleged accomplice, Manfu Asiedu, shopping for hydrogen peroxide in a north London cosmetics wholesale store two weeks earlier.

Six men, all East African immigrants, are on trial for the attempted attack, which came just two weeks after four homegrown Brits of Pakistani origin – at least two with apparent al Qaeda connections – suicide bombed three London trains and a bus, killing 52 civilians. No one died in the July 21 attacks.

So far, prosecutors have sought to dispel the notion that the July 21 bombers were "hastily-arranged" copycats of the July 7 group, says CBS News investigate producer Phil Hirschkorn. It turns out that a Scotland Yard surveillance team snapped photos – also shown in court and publicly released – showing five of the six trial defendants attending a fitness camp together with others in Northwest England in the spring of 2004. A detective told the jury the group's exercises included running around with backpacks on.

Prosecution witnesses said Asiedu visited a North London cosmetics store several times (usually alone, and once with Ibrahim) to buy more than 50 gallons of highly-concentrated hydrogen peroxide. Investigators subsequently found dozens of bottles of it in the London apartment considered the bomb factory.

A sales assistant testified that the men claimed they wanted the chemical — normally used to bleach hair — for stripping paint and wallpaper.

Asiedu appeared relaxed and seemed to have "all his answers prepared" as he bought the entire stock of the strongest concentration of hydrogen peroxide from the Hairways store in London in May 2005, Hairways director Christopher Diaper said.

The shop's manager, Giovanna Lanza, who said she served Asiedu and a companion, told the jury at the Central Criminal Court that they explained they were stripping wallpaper. She warned them that it could burn their skin.

"He said, 'We wear protective clothing,'" Lanza recalled.

Diaper said he questioned Asiedu because of the unusual size of the purchase. "I wanted to be sure in my own mind that this was going to be used for the proper procedures," he told the court.

Thirteen boxes of peroxide in its strongest concentration was purchased on July 5, 2005, just days before the first London subway bombing in which 56 people died. The order was so large that the manufacturer had to make a new batch to meet it.

The two men paid in cash.

Prosecutors have told the 12-person jury in the trial's first week that these backpack bombs were six-liter plastic containers filled with a mixture of concentrated hydrogen peroxide and chapati flour (a recipe which the prosecution said could make a viable explosive), surrounded by screws and nuts, with detonators made of triacetone triperoxide (TATP) to be triggered by a nine-volt battery. The detonators went off, but the explosives did not ignite.

The most dramatic video shown to the jury so far has been the closed circuit television (CCTV) video showing defendant Ramzi Mohamed trying and failing to set off his backpack bomb on a train entering the Oval Station and then fleeing. That tape has not been released. The jury also heard that Mohammed left behind a suicide note: "I beg Allah to accept this action," it began, saying to his two sons: "We will meet again in paradise."

The prosecution says that Asiedu lost his nerve on the day of the planned attack and dumped his device in a park.

Asiedu, 33; Mohamed, 25; Ibrahim, 28; Yasin Omar, 26; Adel Yahya, 24; and Hussain Osman, 28, all deny charges of conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to cause explosions.

Prosecutors said at least two of the men, Omar and Yahya, attended the infamous Finsbury Park Mosque while it was led by radical Egyptian cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri, an al Qaeda associate convicted of incitement to murder in the U.K. and wanted on terrorism charges in the U.S.

The trial is expected to last four months. Eleven other defendants, including Osman's wife and sister-in-law, await trial on charges of assisting the alleged bombers or withholding information from police.