In the dock and the witness box, Muktar Said Ibrahim appeared to be slow-witted. Yet somehow he had established himself as the “emir” (leader) of his group, persuading three young men to follow him to martyrdom and retaining sway over them when they ended up in jail rather than Paradise.

In March 2005 Ibrahim returned from Pakistan, where he had been taught how to make hydrogen peroxide bombs, and began the planning and preparation that led to the events of July 21, the prosecution at Woolwich Crown Court alleged.

Ibrahim, the No 26 bus bomber, had left Britain four months earlier, intending to wage jihad in Afghanistan. He was stopped and questioned for four hours by Special Branch officers at Heathrow but eventually allowed to travel. He came home to prepare for a suicide attack that failed when the devices he made exploded only partially.

Ibrahim had been groomed at a terrorist camp in Pakistan by leaders determined to open up a new front in their global jihad by carrying out attacks in Britain. The same men had trained Mohammad Sidique Khan, the leader of the July 7 cell that killed 52 London Underground and bus passengers, the court was told.

Khan and Ibrahim were both in Pakistan in late 2004 to early 2005 and had returned to this country with the knowledge of how to make a type of explosive charge that had never been seen by forensic scientists in Britain before.

Where Khan had an angry intelligence and organised his murderous mission with methodical zeal, Ibrahim’s preparations by contrast seemed amateurish and inept.

He did, however, try to adhere to the mission statement that had been dictated to him by his masters, the court was told. Written in Arabic, it was found in a notebook with his fingerprints on it, and laid out the principles of his operation.

They included “a clear and defined goal” and “realistic ambition” and were designed to achieve “martyrdom in the path of God”.

Ibrahim, 29, had arrived in Britain with his parents and siblings in November 1990 as refugees from civil war in Eritrea, the court was told. He left school in 1994 with two GCSEs, went to college in Harrow to study leisure and tourism but dropped out after less than a year, taking jobs as a waiter.

He had fallen out with his family, was smoking cannabis heavily and sleeping on friends’ floors and had already been in trouble with the police.

In June 1993 he pleaded guilty to an indecent assault on a 15-year-old girl whom he had lured into an alleyway.

Less than a year later Ibrahim and an accomplice robbed a 77-year-old woman late at night outside Southgate Underground station in North London. Their victim was pushed to the ground and had her bag snatched.

Ibrahim was also part of a gang of North London youths who travelled to Hertfordshire to carry out a series of street robberies. The most serious occurred in May 1995 when five youths threatened two local men with a knife and a broken bottle and robbed them of a watch and an airgun. In January 1996 Ibrahim pleaded guilty at Wood Green Crown Court to the robbery of the elderly woman. Despite trying to blame his accomplice for instigating the crime and using violence, he was jailed for three years.

The following month he received a further two-year jail term for his involvement in the spate of street robberies.

Despite his criminal record, Ibrahim applied successfully for British citizenship in 2004 and was issued with a British passport.

Between May 1995 and September 1998 Ibrahim was detained in various young offender institutions and prisons.

Ibrahim maintained that he did not become a strict Muslim until 2003. He had studied the Koran, become reasonably proficient in Arabic and began frequenting the mosque.

In 2000, through mutual friends, he first met Yassin Hassan Omar, a young man who was already espousing radical religious ideas and who would become Ibrahim’s second-in-command for their July 21 mission.

After a period in a probation hostel, Ibrahim got a housing association flat in Stoke Newington, North London, and was working on market stalls while claiming income support and housing benefit.

He regularly sublet the flat. The proceeds of a three-month let at the beginning of 2003 funded a trip to Sudan from where he returned boasting of having had jihad training and being taught how to fire rocket-propelled grenades.

He and Omar were regulars at Finsbury Park where, after the closure of the mosque in a police raid in January 2003, Abu Hamza was preaching in the street outside.

At least two of the July 7 bombers also made trips to London to see the hook-handed cleric block the road and conduct Friday prayers.

Ibrahim met another of the July 21 plotters, Hussein Osman, at the mosque and at “study circles” in East London, or Speakers’ Corner at Hyde Park. They went to “Islamic camps” in the Lake District – although they thought they were in Scotland – and took their friends. Ibrahim was accompanied by Osman, Ramzi Mohammed and Omar.

One friend of the group, who later testified anonymously against them, told the court: “This was a course designed to make the participants more prepared for jihad. As far as I was aware, none of those going on the camp had any great interest in outdoor activity courses or climbing.

“They were preparing themselves for the type of environment they may encounter in places such as Afghanistan and Iraq. They were getting fit for jihad. A large group travelled from London, including Somalis, Eritreans and Pakistanis,” the friend told the court.

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