THREE failed suicide bombers who wanted to bring carnage to Britain are pleading with European human rights judges to overturn their convictions in a move that sparked anger yesterday.
Lawyers for Muktar Ibrahim, Yassin Omar and Ramzi Mohammed are arguing they failed to get a fair trial because reams of evidence from police interviews should not have been used.
The men also claim they were unfairly blocked from speaking to their legal teams when first arrested.
Critics last night slammed the legal system for allowing appeals to reach the European Court of Human Rights. Nick de Bois MP, a member of the Justice Committee, said: “It should be up to British courts to decide the fate of these convicted criminals, not the discredited ECHR.”
Ibrahim, 34, Omar, 29, and Mohammed, 30, made a similar plea to the UK’s Court of Appeal in 2008 but it was thrown out. That year they made an appeal to the unelected judges at the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights in the hope they would overrule the move.
It has taken almost four years for the court to rule on the next stage and the UK Government has now been asked to submit further evidence before it decides if there is a case to answer.
If the European judges accept their argument they could rule their human rights were breached and their convictions unsafe, opening the door for a retrial or compensation.
The three were jailed for at least 40 years each for conspiracy to murder alongside co-conspirator Hussain Osman. He did not appeal his conviction in 2008 and is not involved in this action.
They had planned to blow themselves up on the public transport network in 2005 just two weeks after 52 people were killed in four bombings on three Tube trains and a bus.
The detonators in their rucksack bombs went off but the home-made explosives did not ignite. At their trial they claimed it had been a hoax designed to raise awareness of the Iraq war.
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