The Crown Prosecution Service have applied today to retry seven men over allegations that they plotted to blow up transatlantic airliners.

The move follows the failure of a jury in one of Britain's biggest terrorist trials to reach verdicts on charges that the men planned to blow up aircraft in mid-flight.

Jurors at Woolwich Crown Court found three men guilty of conspiracy to murder on Monday but could not agree on the Crown's central allegation that the plot involved aircraft.

They were also unable to reach verdicts in relation to four other men, who had admitted making suicide videos, and acquitted an eighth man of all offences.

The decision to seek a retrial was made by Sir Ken Macdonald, QC, the Director of Public Prosecutions, following discussions with senior counsel and Scotland Yard's Counter-terrorism Command.

Sir Ken said he had "carefully considered" the case and concluded "that the prosecution should apply to retry each of these defendants on every count that the recently discharged jury failed to agree upon".

He added: "This will include a count that each defendant conspired to detonate improvised explosive devices on transatlantic passenger aircraft. We shall be returning to court to make this application in due course.”

The seven men are Abdulla Ahmed Ali, 27, Assad Sarwar, 28, and Tanvir Hussain, 27, - all of whom were convicted of conspiracy to murder on Monday - as well as Ibrahim Savant, 27, Arafat Waheed Khan, 27, Waheed Zaman, 24, and Umar Islam, 30. They will all be retried on a charge of conspiring to murder “persons unknown by the detonation of improvised explosive devices on board transatlantic passenger aircraft” between January 1 and August 11 2006.

Four of them - Savant, Khan, Zaman and Islam - will also be tried again on a general charge of conspiracy to murder between the same dates.

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