The fifth member of the failed July 21 suicide bombers, who lost his nerve at the last moment, is facing life in jail after pleading guilty at the Old Bailey to taking part in the plot.

On the eve of his retrial, Manfo Asiedu, 34, admitted conspiring to cause explosions. He confessed to buying all the hydrogen peroxide used to make the bombs in 2005, but said that he refused to take part in the attacks.

Instead, Asiedu dumped his bomb in a wooded area in Little Wormwood Scrubs, West London, where it was found two days later.

The home-made bombs on Underground trains at Shepherds Bush, Oval and Warren Street stations and a bus in Hackney Road failed to go off only because mistakes were made in calculating the ratio of the ingredients.

Muktar Said Ibrahim, Ramzi Mohammed, Yassin Omar and Hussein Osman were told they would all serve a minimum of 40 years in prison when they were convicted in July for their part in the attacks.

This week the sixth man accused of plotting the attacks, Adel Yahya, 25, was jailed for six years and nine months after pleading guilty to collecting information of a kind likely to be useful to a person preparing an act of terrorism.

Asiedu, who came to Britain on a false Ghanaian passport, was recruited by the al-Qaeda cell to buy the masses of chemicals needed for the bombs. During his first trial at Woolwich Crown Court he confessed to making the bombs but claimed that he thought the devices were fake up until the night before the attack.

He was supposed to target White City Tube station in West London.

Asiedu, who lived with two of the bombers at the “factory” in New Southgate, North London, also defused a booby-trap left in a cupboard there. He will be sentenced this month.

Although Asiedu arrived in Britain almost four years ago, little is known about his real identity.

He is thought to be Sumailia Abubakhari, to be 28 and to have been born in the northern region of Ghana known as Bogatanga, or Land of Rocks. He claimed that his Muslim father owned a pharmacy and a construction company, that he belonged to the Nabda tribe, known as the Honest Fools, and his mother was a Christian businesswoman.

In July 2003 he borrowed money from his sister in America and paid $400 for a false Ghanaian passport, fake bank statements and a bogus invitation to the UK. He arrived at Heathrow on a six-month visa in December 2003 and spent his first month at the home of a Ghanaian cab driver in North London.

He is the most unlikely suicide bomber among the 21/7 terrorists. He is dark-skinned and claimed to have suffered racism from his lighter-skinned accomplices — all from Ethiopia, Eritrea or Somalia.

He did not attend the jihad camps that the others frequented, showed little interest in their collection of extremist videos and did not discuss politics and world affairs. Instead, he played basketball and enjoyed an occasional cannabis joint and singing, especially Bob Marley songs. He worked as a handyman and caretaker at Finchley mosque, in North London, where he first encountered Omar.

He claimed that he had been duped by the men he thought were his friends but when questioned by police he lied repeatedly. He remained loyal to Ibrahim and the others until the third month of the trial when he said that he wanted to tell the truth.

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