5 British Men Guilty in Foiled Bombing Plot

Graham Foulkes, whose 22-year-old son David was killed in the July 7 bombings, said the government's "incompetence" had been "appalling." Government critics are calling for an independent inquiry.

British Home Secretary John Reid, the cabinet minister who oversees domestic security, ruled out an official inquiry but praised the convictions of "five dangerous terrorists" and defended the security services. "The government has invested heavily in counterterrorism over the last five years," Reid said in a statement. "The Security Service will have doubled in size by 2008 but it is important to remember that 100 percent commitment can never guarantee 100 percent success."

Peter Clarke, head of counterterrorism operations at Scotland Yard, told reporters that arresting the Crevice suspects was critical, even if it meant disclosing surveillance operations that might have yielded more information about other suspects.

Jonathan Evans, who became head of MI5 nine days ago, on Monday posted on the agency's Web site ( http://www.mi5.gov.uk) a statement and an account of the contacts between the Crevice suspects and transit bombers Khan and Tanweer. Evans denied his investigators had been "complacent" and said the Security Service would "never have the capacity to investigate everyone who appears on the periphery of every operation."

The MI5 account said Khan and Tanweer were not directly involved in the Crevice plot and were not identified as threats until after the July 7 bombings. It called them "petty fraudsters in loose contact with members of the plot" to explode the fertilizer bomb.

Monday's verdicts were also notable for being reached with the help of a U.S.-raised al-Qaeda operative turned informant. Mohammed Junaid Babar, 31, who was born in Pakistan but moved to New York when he was 2, was the prosecution's chief witness.

Babar's mother was in one of the World Trade Center towers when they were destroyed on Sept. 11, 2001, but escaped. Despite that, Babar told investigators that within a week he flew to Pakistan to join a jihad against the West. He was later arrested in the United States and pleaded guilty to terrorism-related charges.

Babar was flown to London, where he testified for more than two weeks about the activities of Khyam and other defendants in Britain and at a house used by the radicals in Lahore, Pakistan. He testified that he also met Khan, the transit bomber, in Pakistan but knew him only by an alias.

Gohel called Babar "part of al-Qaeda's next generation" -- a man raised in the West, who understood Western culture and could move about comfortably in the United States or Britain. "This is a real success story in the war on terror -- to turn terrorists against each other," Gohel said.