Three British Muslims regarded as the key participants in the liquid explosives plot were sentenced on Monday to extremely long sentences by British standards:

In a case that altered airport security worldwide, three British Muslims were imprisoned Monday for at least 30 years each for a plot to kill thousands by blowing up trans-Atlantic airliners with liquid explosives hidden in soda bottles.

The judge described the foiled suicide bombings — meant to rival the Sept. 11 attacks — as “a grave and wicked” conspiracy, likely the most serious terrorist case ever dealt with by a British court. …

Abdulla Ahmed Ali — the plot’s ringleader — was given a minimum of 40 years in prison, one of the longest sentences ever handed out by a British court. Assad Sarwar, 29, and Tanvir Hussain, 28, were imprisoned for a minimum of 36 years and 32 years respectively at London’s high security Woolwich Crown Court.

(Judge Richard Henriques) told all four men they could spend their entire lives in prison if they are judged to continue to pose a threat to the public once they have completed the minimum requirements of their sentences.
[...]
Ali’s 40-year minimum sentence is among the highest jail terms ever meted out in Britain. Although judges can sentence convicted murderers to life without the possibility of parole, it is rare for convicts to spend their whole lives in prison. Only about 25 people have ever received sentences in Britain that condemn them to die behind bars.

The harsh sentences were justified not only by the scale of the carnage these terrorists sought to unleash, but also by the apparently fallacious argument that the plot was not just aspirational but virtually operational:

Police officials said they believe the plotters were just days away from mounting their attacks when officers rounded up dozens of suspects in August 2006. The arrests led to travel chaos as hundreds of jetliners were grounded across Europe.

Investigators concede the group hadn’t managed to produce a viable bomb at the time of their arrests or purchased airline tickets, but insist the plot was serious.

“This was a viable and meticulously planned conspiracy and I conclude it was imminent,” Henriques said.

You may remember the whole brouhaha that erupted in 2006 when it was revealed that British authorities were forced to arrest the conspirators well before they felt they had finished gathering evidence:

Dick Cheney, the former US Vice President, nearly destroyed Britain’s efforts to bring the airline bomb plotters to justice, police and intelligence experts said today.

By ordering the early arrest of Rashid Rauf, the bombers’ link man in Pakistan, Washington forced British police to detain the suspects in the UK before all the evidence had been gathered, it was claimed.
[...]
Although Britain was running the investigation, including a massive round-the-clock surveillance of 200 suspects, the UK was not warned that Rauf – the al-Qaeda facilitator who kept the English plotters in touch with bomb experts and terrorism trainers in Pakistan – was going to be arrested.

“We believed the Americans had demanded the arrest and we were angry we had not been informed,” said Mr Hayman, writing in The Times today.
[...]
“The arrest hampered our evidence-gathering and placed us in Britain under intolerable pressure.”

The consensus at the time was that Dick Cheney had precipitated the arrests well before the aspirational plot came close to becoming operational. It was felt that Cheney had seriously jeopardized the possibility of securing convictions against the key plotters. And now, lo and behold, the key plotters have been successfully convicted and given long sentences.

However, this seems to have been accomplished only by judicial perversion of the facts of the case. The prosecution and the judge seem to have agreed to resolutely distort and ignore all the evidence that the plotters were very far from being able to actually carry out the plot. Police officials cheerfully testified that they believed the plotters were just days away from mounting their attacks. The judge cheerfully pronounced that the evidence had convinced him that the attacks were imminent.

However, the plotters had a liquid explosives bomb only in theory. They had not even come close to translating the theory into a bomb that actually worked. This is how far away they were:

It took government scientists 58 attempts over six months, and at a cost of 650,000 pounds ($1,078,000) to create a viable bomb using the plotters’ design, Bishop said. Henriques dismissed his argument.

If this is British Justice, it’s funny how remarkably it resembles Guantanamo justice.