The brother and sister of a failed British suicide bomber were cleared at the Old Bailey today of failing to alert authorities about his mission in Israel.

Bomber Omar Sharif’s sister Parveen was also cleared of inciting him to go through with the bombing. Parveen and her brother Zahid, both from Derby, hugged and embraced each other in the dock at the end of the landmark case.

But it emerged today that Parveen had allegedly described herself as one of Osama bin Laden's "team" while working as a supply teacher at a Derby primary school.

In evidence outlined to the court, but ruled inadmissible and not passed on to the jurors, pupils at the school said she had made a disturbing joke about the September 2001 attack on the World Trade Center in New York only a few days after the atrocity.

The charge that the pair faced - that they failed to disclose information - was a provision of the Terrorism Act 2000, passed by Parliament in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

Prosecutors had alleged that a week before Omar Sharif took part in a terrorist attack which killed three people in an Israeli bar, his sister Parveen had sent him an encouraging e-mail.

Sharif was one of two bombers who hoped to become Britain’s first Islamic martyrs. But on the day, 27-year-old Sharif’s bomb failed to explode. His body was found in the sea off Tel Aviv 12 days later.

Parveen Sharif had denied inciting Omar to commit an act of terrorism. Together with her businessman brother Zahid, 38, she further denied failing to disclose information about terrorism.

Sharif’s fellow bomber Asif Hanif, 21, from Hounslow, west London, succeeded in detonating his bomb. The explosion killed three people at Mike’s Place, a seafront bar in Tel Aviv, Israel, on April 30, 2003. Sixty-five people were injured.

Jonathan Laidlaw, prosecuting, had told the court that it was a terrorist attack organised and sponsored by the military wing of the Palestinian Islamic group Hamas. He said Hanif and Sharif became the first British Muslims to give up their lives in a suicide bombing.

The two men left their respective homes in London and Derby and flew to the Middle East from London on April 10, 2003. They considered themselves martyrs to Islam and the struggle of the Palestinians, Mr Laidlaw said.

"In killing three innocent people and injuring many others, Hamas had carried out the first successful suicide bombing mission to have been launched from the Gaza Strip and it was them first time Hamas had used non-Palestinian volunteers for a terrorist attack.

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