Yeshi Girma is jailed for failing to tell police of her husband's plans
The wife of would-be suicide bomber, Hussain Osman, has been sentenced to 15 years in prison after being found guilty of helping hide her husband from police and withholding information about the planned attack at Shepherd’s Bush Tube station on 21 July 2005.
Yeshi Girma, 32, of Stockwell, south London was found guilty on Wednesday of having known about Osman’s plan to bomb the Tube and failing to alert the authorities “without reasonable excuse”.
Passing sentence, Judge Worsley said Girma had helped a “ruthless fanatic”.
"You did not encourage Osman in his fanatical mission but fell under his evil spell," he said.
Girma’s brother Esayas, 22, and sister, Mulu, 24, were jailed
for 10 years each for their part in helping hide Osman from the police after the failed attack.
Mulu’s boyfriend, 25-year-old Mohamed Kabashi, received a nine-year sentence for failing to disclose informaiton before the trial began. Kabashi admitted having helped Osman.
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 said.
During the trial, prosecutor Max Hill told the jury that, had Osman succeeded in his plan, there would have been “carnage and mass murder” at Shepherd’s Bush Tube station that day.
"She (Girma) had some information about what the bombers intended to do on 21/7, but failed to bring this to the attention of the police," he said.
“It follows that armed with that prior knowledge of what was going to happen, Yeshi Girma could have attempted to prevent the attacks."
The court heard that after his bomb failed to explode, Osman called Girma as he fled from Shepherd’s Bush’s Hammersmith & City Line station. She then picked him up with her brother, Esayas, and drove Osman to Brighton to hide in her sister, Mulu’s, flat.
Mulu then treated her brother-in-law’s injuries - burns from the hydrogen peroxide mixture that leaked from the device – and disposed of his clothes in woodland, thereby destroying forensic evidence.
Osman was then moved to the flat of Mulu’s boyfriend, Mohamed Kabashi.
When police questioned Yeshi Girma about her husband, she gave false information and claimed she and Osman were estranged.
After two days in Brighton, Osman travelled back to London then took a Eurostar train to France. He then went on to his brother’s house in Rome, where he was eventually arrested.
In 2007, Osman and three other men were jailed for life for the failed 21 July suicide bombings.
12 June 2008
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