Failed suicide bomber's wife jailed for 15 years

The wife of failed suicide bomber Hussain Osman was jailed for 15 years today for failing to tell police of his plans for "carnage and mass murder".

Muslim convert Yeshi Girma, 32, knew of his plot to kill innocent Tube passengers on 21 July 2005 and could have stopped it going ahead.

It was only the botched bomb-making of Osman and his fellow terrorists that saved a repeat of the carnage wreaked on 7 July, two weeks before.

Just over half an hour after his failed attack on Shepherd's Bush Tube station, Osman was on the phone to his wife to set in motion an escape plan.

Yeshi, the mother of Osman's three sons, helped him flee to Brighton before he took a Eurostar to Paris and ended up in Rome, where he was arrested.

Yesterday she was found guilty of having information about terrorism and failing to disclose it "without reasonable excuse".

Judge Paul Worsley told her: "You already shared Osman's extreme views on Islam and co-ordinated the escape plan for the father of your three children after he failed to achieve his sought-after place in paradise."

Her brother Esayas Girma, 22, and sister Mulu Girma, 24, whom she enlisted to help her escape plan, were jailed for 10 years.

Yeshi and Esayas, both from Stockwell, south London, and Mulu, from Brighton, were all found guilty yesterday of assisting an offender and failing to disclose information about Osman's involvement in the 21 July attacks.

Mulu's boyfriend Mohamed Kabashi, 25, from Brighton, admitted assisting Osman and failing to disclose information before the trial began.

He was jailed for nine years.

Yeshi sobbed throughout the hearing and raised her hands to the air as she was sentenced. She had to be helped from the dock as she was taken down.

The judge told the four: "When Osman's suicide mission, aimed at mass slaughter, failed, each of you in different ways assisted him to escape justice so that he could flee to Italy to be able to strike again."

If they had told police what they knew and he had been arrested earlier, the death of Jean Charles de Menezes in Stockwell on 22 July could have been avoided, the judge said.

The innocent Brazilian was gunned down by armed police looking for Osman in the wake of the 21 July attacks.

Judge Worsley said the sentences he was able to impose were "woefully inadequate to reflect the enormity of what you were about in July 2005".

"I have no doubt that each of you were prepared to aid a ruthless fanatic and that in so doing each of you must have harboured the hope that the bombers would ultimately be successful in their mission to seek to damage our society."

He told the four their sentences would reflect public "condemnation" of their actions and aim to "deter others minded to act as you did".

The judge added: "You did not encourage Osman in his fanatical mission but fell under his evil spell."