The two ringleaders of a British al-Qaeda-style terrorist recruitment and training cell were jailed yesterday.

Mohammed Hamid, 50, indoctrinated the July 21 bomb plotters at secret training camps across Britain and held talks at his home in East London. He was found guilty of organising terrorist training in the New Forest and at a Berkshire paintballing centre as well as soliciting murder, and was jailed indefinitely with a minimum term of seven and a half years.

Atilla Ahmet, 44, the self-styled “emir” of the gang and the former bodyguard to the notorious cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri, was also jailed after he was secretly recorded encouraging other young Muslim men to kill in the name of Islam.

He was sentenced to six years and 11 months in jail by Woolwich Crown Court after admitting three charges of soliciting murder at the start of a four-month trial. He once boasted of being “the No 1 al-Qaeda in Europe”.

The court was told that Hamid, after being asked how many people had died in London on July 7, said in a low whisper: “Fifty-two. That’s not even breakfast for me.”

Sentencing the two men Mr Justice Pitchers said he was convinced that they intended their pupils to commit terrorism overseas. He said: “Mohammed Hamid, you are, in my judgment, dangerous. You can be quite genuinely amusing and charming. We heard it on tapes and saw it to some extent in this court. You also have real knowledge of the Koran and Islamic teaching. However, that is only one side of you. The other side we heard on the recording that has become so well known – when you spoke of the 52 dead on 7/7 being breakfast for you.

“You used your charm and knowledge of the Koran to influence others to terrorism.”

The judge said that Hamid was prone to exaggeration and lies but that there was some truth in his boasts. He said that the lies were designed to persuade vulnerable young Muslim men that he had an active international terrorist network.

“I believe you have sent trainees to Afghanistan as you said and you did have a contact in Mogadishu who had been looking around.”

Hamid organised outdoor activities, including camping and paintballing, in the Lake District, the New Forest, Berkshire, Kent and East Sussex. He claimed that the trips were innocent.

Covert photographers, however, recorded Hamid and his followers as they carried out mock military training exercises. Five of their followers were jailed for up to four years and 11 months last month.

Hamid once boasted to police that his name was Osama bin London and claimed to have a bomb after he was arrested in Oxford Street in 2004. Phone calls, text messages and e-mails were monitored and intercepted before an undercover policeman infiltrated the group for five months.

Among Hamid’s pupils were the four failed July 21 bombers – Hussain Osman, Ramzi Mohammed, Yassin Omar and Muktar Said Ibrahim, the ringleader – who were later identified as attending the camps in the Lake District in 2004. Mohammed and Osman joined the gang again for a paintballing session at the Springwood Centre, in Tonbridge, Kent, several weeks before attempting to bomb the London transport network.

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