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Failed London bomber's wife jailed for 15 years

LONDON (AFP) - The wife of one of the failed 2005 London suicide bombers was jailed for 15 years Thursday, after being found guilty of failing to tell the police about the terrorist plot.Yeshi Girma, 32, knew her husband Hussain Osman was planning to unleash carnage in the failed July 21, 2005 attacks and could have stopped the attempted bombings, England's Old Bailey central criminal court heard.

Judge Paul Worsley told her the highly controversial police shooting the following day of innocent Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes -- mistaken for a suicide bomber -- could have been avoided had she not kept quiet.

The plot was a bungled attempt to repeat the attacks of exactly two weeks earlier on July 7, when four Islamist extremist suicide bombers killed 52 innocent people on London's transport network.

Girma, who has three children by Osman, was found guilty by a jury of having information about terrorism and "without reasonable excuse" failing to disclose it.

She was also convicted for assisting an offender and failing to disclose information about Osman's involvement in the plot. Three others were also jailed for their part in his escape. She wept as she was sentenced Thursday.

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."

Girma helped Osman flee to Brighton, on the south coast. He later took a train to Paris, then travelled on to Rome, where he was arrested.

She destroyed evidence from the couple's south London home, the police said.

Girma claimed she was not married to Ethiopia-born Osman, did not live with him, and knew little of what he was doing.

Her brother Esayas, 22, and sister Mulu, 24, were convicted of aiding Osman after the bungled attack. They were jailed for 10 years.

Her sister's boyfriend Mohamed Kabashi, 25, admitted assisting Osman and failing to disclose information. He was jailed for nine years.

Osman was convicted of conspiracy to murder last year alongside fellow failed bombers Yassin Omar, Ramzi Mohamed and Muktar Ibrahim. They were each jailed for at least 40 years.

They tried to detonate rucksacks laden with home-made explosives on three London Underground trains and a bus, but the bombs failed to go off.

The July 2005 waves of attacks left Britain on high alert and the government has since ramped up its anti-terror operations, while relations with Britain's Muslim community were brought sharply into focus.