The path from bored British teenager to terrorist traitor was carefully laid down for the ordinary young men seduced into hatching the spectacular bomb plot foiled by MI5 and police.

The humdrum lives of the plotters were transformed by their dream of becoming freedom fighters for radical Islam. The most vainglorious took to calling himself “Superstar”.

All had unremarkable starts to life. Four were Pakistani in origin, the other was born in Algeria. Typical teenage boys, most had been happy to drink, smoke and chase girls. Their aimless existence and vague Muslim identities made them easy prey for wily extremists.

It began at Langley Green mosque, a detached house that serves part of Crawley nicknamed “Langleydesh”. The ringleader, Omar Khyam, 25, was radicalised there in the late 1990s. Jawad Akbar, 23, a student, and Waheed Mahmood, 35, were both neighbours.

A young worshipper described the mood of the times, well before 9/11. “They were into implementing Sharia law in this country. They were into finding out about Chechnya and combat training. These guys liked watching tapes from Chechnya showing soldiers giving up their lives, and bin Laden tapes . . . I saw them playing a DVD on a laptop in the mosque. It was of Hamas people saying they were against the infidels and that Muslims needed to rise up around the world.”

Omar Bakri Mohammed’s radical Muslim youth organisation, al-Muhajiroun, was on the rise. Two of his former pupils in Derby would go on to commit the first suicide bombing by a Briton, killing three people at a bar in Tel Aviv in 2003. In Crawley, Mahmood, a former Mujahidin fighter in Afghanistan, was the linchpin for the radicalising group. Bakri now lives in exile in Lebanon; his organisation has been disbanded.

“Some Muslims in Langley Green became involved with al-Muhajiroun. It became a tussle,” the worshipper said. “A lot of those in favour of Omar Bakri went to Langley Green mosque – about 10 or 15 of them. Eventually, quite a few people from London were coming down here. They used to hire Langley Green community centre and do talks there.

“We went once to see what it was about. He [Bakri] was banging his fists. We told him, ‘Islam is peace and you look like a raging bull’ . . .

They were eventually kicked out of the mosque because people were saying that it was getting a bad reputation. The moderates were quite vocal about it.

“We used to say to them, if you really want to fight, why don’t you go to Afghanistan or Pakistan?”

Some did. Three Crawley Muslims were killed fighting for the Taleban in Afghanistan in 2001.

Khyam, who led the fertiliser bomb plot, also responded to the call to foreign jihad, dismaying his family. “Omar is a bit of a weirdo. His parents ran off after him when he went to Pakistan. He said he was going to become a Mujahidin,” the worshipper said. “He was a bit of a loner, then had a group to join. The others got sucked in.”

Salahuddin Amin, 32, a quiet, bespectacled taxi driver, met the Crawley gang when they paid a visit to his Luton mosque to drum up support. He defrauded British banks and building societies of £21,000 to help jihadis and fled to Pakistan, his birthplace, taking two greyhounds and four fighting cocks to indulge his love for animal sports.

He decided to return after hearing a sermon from Abu Hamza, another radical cleric, now jailed in Britain for soliciting murder. Amin was seized by the Pakistani authorities and claims that they tortured him by threatening him with an electric drill.

Anthony Garcia, 25, the Algerian, was a self-confessed “Ali G character”, obsessed with music and girls, until he traipsed behind his devout older brother to Islamic Society meetings. Garcia failed most of his GCSEs and worked as a security guard while longing to be a male model. He wore crocodile shoes and, in court, avoided putting his headphones over his hair in case they damaged his perfect preening.

Garcia went to the religious talks at his brother’s college in Romford because he liked the food. He was converted to the cause after watching a video showing atrocities in Kashmir. “It was the worst thing anyone could have seen. Little children sexually abused, and women,” he said. Garcia eventually made it to Pakistan to learn to fight. In Britain, he bought the fertiliser for the bomb.

Although Akbar achieved four grade As at A level, he chose to study at Brunel, possibly because of its reputation as an Islamist recruiting ground. He too went to Pakistan to join a paramilitary training camp. There, rather than try to cross the border to Afghanistan, the plotters decided to fight in their British homeland.

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