Radicals who turned into mass killers

The ringleader, recruiting sergeant and main financier of the 7/7 plot grew up in the deprived Beeston area of Leeds.

Khan, 30, appeared to be a pillar of the community, steering local youths away from crime and drugs by organising outdoor activities and helping to set up a gym in a mosque basement.

In 2001 he became a learning mentor at Hillside Primary School in Beeston, where he worked with disaffected and vulnerable pupils. But Khan abused his position, befriending one pupil aged 11 or 12 and attempting to radicalise him.

The bomber began to take and interest in hard-line Islamist group al-Muhajiroun, linked to hate preacher Abu Hamza, and continued with trips to jihadist training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

SHEHZAD TANWEER:

He was Khan’s right-hand man in planning and carrying out the London bombings.

Outwardly he seemed thoroughly assimilated into British life, working in his father’s fish and chip shop and regularly playing cricket, but he underwent a transformation after the 9/11 attacks on the United States.

Tanweer, 22, came from a relatively well-off family in Beeston and excelled both in his school work and on the sports field.

He lived near Khan and became friends with him in 1999 when he was about 17.

By 2004 the pair were jointly involved in Islamist extremism.

They made long round trips to meet British terrorists plotting a fertiliser bomb attack and travelled to Pakistan together at the end of that year.

JERMAINE LINDSAY:

The wild card among the four bombers, Lindsay was a Jamaican-born Muslim convert who never made a secret of his extremist views.

He was brought up by his mother in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, where he alarmed his teachers by attempting to radicalise pupils.

Lindsay, 19, handed out leaflets in support of al-Qaida and told one teacher that he wanted to fight in Afghanistan and even boasted of planning to enlist in the British Army so that he could kill his fellow soldiers.

Lindsay met his future wife, Samantha Lewthwaite, in an internet chat room and they married in October 2002, moved to the town of Aylesbury, in Buckinghamshire, in September 2003, and had a son in April 2004.

HASIB HUSSAIN:

The youngest member of the cell had a chance to abandon the plot, but instead murdered innocent Londoners after buying a new battery for his faulty detonator and boarding a bus.

He waited until it was in Tavistock Square before blowing himself up and killing 13 people.

Hussain, 18, was an unexceptional teenager who had an ordinary upbringing in the Holbeck area of Leeds.

He raised concern when shortly after the 9/11 attacks he passed two pupils a note which said, “You’re next” in a reference to the terrorist atrocities in the US.

He also defaced a religious education schoolbook with the slogan “Al Qaida No Limits” and the attack on the World Trade Centre.