The wife of one of the failed 21/7 suicide bombers was jailed for 15 years today for failing to disclose details of his plot to cause carnage on the London Underground.
Yeshi Girma, 32, who has three children by the bomber Hussein Osman, wept throughout the sentencing hearing at the Old Bailey and threw her hands in the air as the jail term was handed down. She had to be helped from the dock as she was led away to begin the jail term.
Her sister Mulu Girma, 24, a model, and brother Esayas Girma, 22, were each jailed for 10 years for helping Osman escape a massive police manhunt and withholding information from the authorities.
Judge Paul Worsley told the three siblings, who held hands as they sat in the dock, that the sentences he was able to pass by law were woefully inadequate to reflect the enormity of what you were about in July 2005. He said that had they informed the police of Osmans whereabouts, the death of Jean Charles de Menezes, shot by officers hunting the bomber, might have been avoided.
The judge also jailed Mohammed Kabashi, 25, Mulus former lover, for nine years after he admitted the offences.
Osman was one of four men who tried to detonate suicide bombs on Tube trains and a No 26 bus two weeks after terrorists had killed 52 innocent passengers in the July 7 attacks. A huge death toll was only averted because the bombers, all former worshippers at Finsbury Park mosque, failed to mix the chemical components of their devices properly.
Osman was supposed to blow up a train at Shepherds Bush, west London, and ran off across the tracks when it partially exploded.
He called his wife and she and her brother came to meet him in car before driving Osman to Brighton where Mulu Girma, a student and fashion model, tended burns to his leg caused by material leaking from his rucksack bomb. Mulu then took Osman to a safe house while her brother and sister returned to London with Kabashi to attempt to destroy evidence.
Osman was later able to return to London then leave the country on a Eurostar train before he was arrested in Rome eight days after the attacks.
The four-month trial was also told that Yeshi knew in advance of her husbands plans and that Osman and his fellow bombers made final preparations for the attacks at her flat in Stockwell, south London.
The judge told her: You already shared Osmans extreme views on Islam and coordinated the escape plan for the father of your three children after he failed to achieve his sought-after place in paradise.
Addressing all four defendants, he added: I have no doubt that each of you were prepared to aid a ruthless fanatic and that in so doing each of you must have harboured the hope that the bombers would ultimately be successful in their mission to seek to damage our society.
The judge said his sentences would reflect public condemnation of their actions and serve as a deterrent to others tempted to follow their example. The judge added: You did not encourage Osman in his fanatical mission but fell under his evil spell.
Pavlos Panayi, defending Yeshi, said in mitigation: Her actions were instigated by a twisted and irrational devotion to Osman, the father of her children, with whom she had had a long, troubled and volatile relationship.
Osman and his fellow bomb plotters were jailed for life last year for conspiracy to murder and told they would serve a minimum of 40 years. In February, five men received sentences of between seven and 17 years for assisting them and withholding information about their activities. |
A man accused of detonating a bomb on a London Underground train told a court yesterday how he fled the capital disguised in a burka. Yassin Omar said he escaped 24 hours after he set off a rucksack device on July 21, 2005, as he was terrified the police would shoot him. 
LONDON - British police involved in the fatal shooting of an innocent Brazilian man, gunned down in July by officers who thought he was a suicide bomber, might face criminal action, an independent watchdog said on Friday.