Dhiren Barot recruited impressionable young men to his support team, with members specialising in architecture, IT and systems engineering.

The group were separately tasked to research technical information for the potential bombs and how to disable fire alarms.

Barot sent instructions to Feroze and Jalil by coded emails using the name kewl_n_kinki which pretended to be harmless teenage chat about girls and music.

Mr Laidlaw said: "They were amongst his trusted few. They were his support team. If Barot was the General, they were his lieutenants."

Barot and many of his team had been influenced by the lectures of extremist preachers like Abu Hamza.

Bhatti, whose father is a retired engineer for Jaguar, had graduated in Systems Engineering at Brunel University and was studying a Phd course in Finite Element Modelling and Analysis at the time of his arrest.

He claims he was bullied at school and had no social life before he met the charismatic Barot - his only friend - at the University.

Feroze left school after his GCSE's and lived with his wife and three children.

He is a former English Welterweight Champion of Thai Boxing and helped run the family car and garage business after his father, a local Labour party member and President of the Kashmiri Association, died in 2000.

It is thought he met Barot through their shared interest in the struggle for independence in Kashmir.

Ul Haq was a pupil and member of the Air Training Corp at Preston Manor High School and graduated from University College London with a second class BSc in Architecture, Planning, Building and Environmental Studies.

He was working for a firm of chartered surveyors at the time of his arrest and gave Barot admission to the libraries at his university and the Royal Institute of British Architects.

Jalil studied for a degree in IT at Luton University and was employed by Luton Borough Council before taking on a plastering job at the time of his arrest.

Rehman, who lived with his family in Hertfordshire, was educated in Watford and was studying for a degree in graphic design at the University of Westminster.

He was introduced to Barot after meeting Jalil at a local mosque in the summer of 2004 and was tasked to research the disabling of fire alarms.

It is thought Barot made use of some of the knowledge gained from Rehman's night shift work at the Ramada Jarvis hotel in Watford.

Tarmohamed, who lived with his wife and daughter, had studied manufacturing engineering at Brunel University and worked as an administrator for an endowment company but was made redundant shortly before his arrest.

He is thought to have been the closest to Barot, at least in the early stages of the plot, and was the subject of a dedication in Barot's book 'The Army of Madinah in Kashmir.' Shaffi lived with his family in Harlesden and worked for the company Phone City at the Wembley Park Business centre after studying business and finance at Hendon College.

He told jurors during the trial he was a former crack addict who had no interest in religion and preferred to go out partying, drinking, smoking cannabis and chatting up girls.