Wife of failed UK suicide bomber on trial

By Mark Trevelyan

LONDON (Reuters) - The wife of a failed British suicide bomber had prior knowledge of a July 2005 plot which could have caused "carnage and mass murder" in London, the jury at her trial was told on Wednesday.

Yeshiemebet Girma was the wife of Hussein Osman, one of four men who tried unsuccessfully to detonate rucksack bombs on three London underground trains and a bus on July 21, 2005.

She went on trial on Wednesday with her brother Esyas, sister Mulu and two other men, Shadi Abdelgadir and Omar Almagboul.

The five, all of African origin, are accused of helping Osman escape after the failed attacks, when he fled London for the south coast resort of Brighton.

"These defendants, beyond merely knowing what Osman had done, took positive steps to help him hide and/or escape," prosecutor Max Hill said.

Hill said Yeshiemebet Girma was the only one of the five who had known of the bomb plot in advance.

"Armed with that prior knowledge of what was going to happen, the defendant Yeshi Girma could have attempted to prevent the attacks," he said. If the bombs had exploded properly "there would have been carnage and mass murder".