Three men were convicted yesterday of the 2006 airline suicide bomb plot, which if successful would have blown up seven transatlantic airliners and killed thousands of people.
It took three years, a huge scale surveillance operation, and more than £50 million in police and legal costs to prove that the plot to detonate liquid explosives smuggled on board in soft drinks bottles existed.
The three men - all British Muslims - had been found guilty of conspiracy to murder at an earlier trial last year. However, prosecutors said it was vital to secure a conviction on the charge of conspiring to blow up the aircraft to prove that the threat to air traffic was genuine.
Since the plot was intercepted in 2006, strict restrictions have been placed on passengers world-wide carrying liquid in their hand-luggage.
The men found guilty were Abdulla Ahmed Ali, 28, the leader of the British cell, Tanvir Hussain, 28, his lieutenant, and Assad Sarwar, 29, who was not going to take part in the suicide mission so that he could distribute "martyrdom videos" recorded by the bombers.
New evidence put to the jury at the retrial took the form of a series of emails in which the men discussed their plans - using code-words - with an al-Qaeda fixer based in Pakistan. The exchanges suggested that the plot was days away from execution.
Security sources said that this was "highly significant" in proving the link between British extremists and Al-Qaeda. British and US counter-terror officials believe that Al-Qaeda and extremists in Pakistan devised the plot and provided key technical knowledge.
The prosecutor, Peter Wright QC, said to the court: "The tenor of the emails from Ali or Sarwar to Pakistan is of a progress report. The tenor of the emails from Pakistan is of instruction, command, direction to the men on the ground.
"They demonstrate also that Ali and Sarwar had entirely different but equally important roles to perform, and they were entirely under the control and direction of Pakistan."
Plot leaders Sarwar and Ali had made several trips to Pakistan, for what police believe was terrorist training.
MI5 believe that they were linked to the highest levels of al-Qaeda through a British man called Rashid Rauf, who was also involved in the plotting of the 7/7 attack in London in 2005. It was reported that Rauf was killed by an unmanned drone in Pakistan last year.
This strong connection between the plot and figures in Pakistan are one reason why the British government has been applying pressure on Pakistan to do more to tackle terrorism. Fears have been growing amongst both UK and US intelligence officials that attacks could be planned in Pakistan but carried out by British or US citizens with Pakistani heritage.
A further four men were found guilty of lesser charges at the trial in Woolwich Crown Court. Another man, a Muslim convert, Donald Stewart Whyte, 23, was cleared of terrorism charges. He demanded that prosecutors apologise for putting him on trial.
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