London suicide bomb plotter given 33 years in jail

LONDON, Nov 20 (Reuters) - A Ghanaian man was sentenced to 33 years in jail on Tuesday for helping plot botched al Qaeda-inspired suicide attacks in London in July 2005.

Manfo Kwaku Asiedu was sentenced by a court in the British capital after earlier admitting a charge of conspiracy to cause explosions over the failed bombings.

The attacks were attempted two weeks after British Islamist suicide bombers killed 52 people on three underground trains and a bus in London in early July.

Four men linked to Asiedu -- Muktah Said Ibrahim, Yassin Hassan Omar, Ramzi Mohammed and Hussein Osman -- tried to detonate hydrogen peroxide-based bombs on July 21, but their homemade devices failed to explode and no one was killed.

They were jailed for a minimum of 40 years each but a jury failed to reach a verdict against Asiedu and another man, Adel Yahya. Yahya was jailed for nearly seven years earlier this month after pleading guilty to a lesser offence.

Asiedu had been due to face a re-trial but pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey, London's main criminal court, on Nov. 9.

He was supposed to be carrying a fifth bomb on the day but ended up dumping the rucksack with the device in a park in north London. He denied losing his nerve and said he just wanted to get rid of the bomb.

A few days after the failed attacks he handed himself in to police. He said in court he had then lied to detectives on an "epic scale".

During the trial he turned on his co-conspirators, contradicting their defence that the plot was a hoax designed as a publicity stunt, meaning he had to be seated separately from the other accused in the dock.

His lawyer said Asiedu had returned to the flat where the bombs were made to remove the hydrogen peroxide and that his client had dismantled a booby-trapped sideboard which could have destroyed the entire apartment block.

The basis of Asiedu's guilty plea was that he had bought the hydrogen peroxide for the bombs, his lawyer said. (Reporting by Tim Castle and Andrew Hough; Editing by Elisabeth O'Leary)