21/7 'failings could be repeated'

The jury have found four men guilty of conspiracy to murder

"Systemic" failings allowed the ringleader of the 21 July bomb plotters to slip through the police's net, the shadow home secretary has said.

The failure to track Muktar Ibrahim could happen again, David Davis warned.

Ibrahim, 29, Yassin Omar, 26, Ramzi Mohammed, 25, and Hussain Osman, 28, were convicted on Monday of plotting to bomb transport in London in 2005.

The jury was discharged after failing to reach verdicts on two other defendants.

Those defendants, Adel Yahya, 24, and Manfo Kwaku Asiedu, 34, deny all charges.

'Porous borders'

The Conservatives have called for an independent inquiry to examine why Ibrahim was allowed to leave the UK to go to a jihadi training camp in Pakistan, despite having been charged with threatening behaviour, related to the distribution of extremist material.

When Ibrahim and two other men were stopped at Heathrow Airport, officers found they were carrying large amounts of cash, cold-weather gear and pages of a first-aid manual on ballistic injuries - but let them go on their way.

Mr Davis told the BBC's Today programme: "There is a systemic problem.

"It's partly a question of volume of suspects. It's partly a question of volume of people crossing the border.

Referring to the former Metropolitan Police Commissioner, he added: "John Stevens used to talk about our porous borders. This is most startling example I have ever seen."

CCTV AND THE INVESTIGATION 28,000 items of CCTV gathered 7,500 items viewed 18,000 man-hours of viewing Seven hours of crucial CCTV used in evidence

But a spokeswoman for the Home Office said she could not comment on the specifics of the case until the final sentences were delivered.

But she said that procedures had been tightened, and that other proposed government measures - such as identity cards - would prevent a repeat.

She added: "Since 21 July 2005 the level of collaboration between the Border and Immigration Agency and bodies such as the Serious Organised Crime Agency has increased."

A Metropolitan Police spokesman has defended the handling of Ibrahim's case, saying he was on bail and not a wanted man when he left the UK. Ibrahim's bail conditions did not prevent him travelling and a minor offence such as the one he was accused of would not have been flagged up on databases seen by immigration officers, the spokesman said.

The bomb plotters had tried to detonate rucksacks laden with explosives on the Tube and a bus. But the bombs failed to go off, sparing the city a repeat of the horrors of the 7/7 attacks, two weeks earlier.

Hairdressing products

The four defendants claimed that the bombs covered in shrapnel were fakes, and their actions had been intended as a protest against the war in Iraq.

However, after a six-month trial, the jury unanimously found Ibrahim, Omar, Mohammed and Osman guilty of conspiracy to murder.

The judge, Mr Justice Fulford, has said he would accept a majority verdict of 10 to 2 in the case of Mr Asiedu and Mr Yahya.

The devices which the guilty four all carried in rucksacks were made of chapati flour and a similar hydrogen peroxide mixture to that used by the men behind the 7 July attacks in which 52 people died.

Mohammed targeted a train at Oval station in south London, Omar was on board a train at Warren Street in central London and Osman travelled on a Hammersmith and City line service to Shepherd's Bush in west London.

Ibrahim boarded a bus in Shoreditch, east London.

The jury heard that had the suicide bombs detonated properly, dozens of people would have been killed.

THE FOUR 21/7 ATTACKS 1230: Ramzi Mohammed - Tube at Oval station 1240: Yassin Omar - Tube at Warren Street station 1240: Hussain Osman - Tube between Latimer Road and Shepherd's Bush 1300: Muktar Said Ibrahim - Bus in Shoreditch

The attacks, and the subsequent escape of the four guilty men, sparked the UK's largest ever manhunt.

Their movements were captured on thousands of hours of CCTV film, with seven hours worth proving to be crucial evidence.

Ibrahim and Mohammed were captured a week later after armed police surrounded a flat in west London.

Omar was arrested in Birmingham after travelling there disguised as a woman in a burka, while Osman was detained in Rome and extradited back to Britain.

It later emerged that the defendants had been photographed by police surveillance officers while on a 2004 camping trip in the Lake District.