London bomb plotters planned attack 'bigger than 7/7'

Three British men planned to carry out suicide bombings which could have been more devastating than the July 7, 2005 attacks in London, a UK court heard today.

Fifty-one people died and over 700 were injured in co-ordinated suicide bombings on London underground trains and a bus by four British Islamists in the so-called 7/7 attacks.

Irfan Naseer, 31, Irfan Khalid and Ashik Ali, both 27, are accused of being central figures in the plot, jurors at Woolwich Crown Court were told.

"The police successfully disrupted a plan to commit an act or acts of terrorism on a scale potentially greater than the London bombings in July 2005 had it been allowed to run its course," said prosecutor Brian Altman.

"The defendants were proposing to detonate up to eight rucksack bombs in a suicide attack and/or to detonate bombs on timers in crowded areas in order to cause mass deaths and casualties.

"One of them even described a plan to cause another 9/11," he added, referring to the 2001 attacks in the United States.

All the men, from the city of Birmingham in central England, are accused of engaging in conduct in preparation of terrorist acts, which they deny.

Naseer is accused of five counts of the offence, Khalid four and Ali three, all between Christmas Day 2010 and September 2011. Nasser and Khalid are also accused of travelling to Pakistan for training in terrorism.