A British bomb-maker has been found guilty of building improvised explosive devices to kill American soldiers in Iraq.

In what is believed to be a legal first, Anis Abid Sardar (38) has been convicted in a UK court for his part in the bloody Iraqi insurgency.

Black cab driver Sardar, from Wembley in north west London, built bombs as part of a "deadly" campaign to kill Americans fighting in the country.

The lethal contraptions were planted in or around the road west out of Baghdad in 2007, London's Woolwich Crown Court heard.

One of them caused the death of 34 year-old Sergeant First Class Randy Johnson, of 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment when it hit the armoured vehicle he was travelling in on September 27 2007.

Sardar was snared some seven years later after officials at the FBI's Terrorist Explosive Device Analytical Centre (Tedac) found his fingerprints on some of the bombs.

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Whatsapp Court drawing of Anis Abid Sardar Credit: PA

A jury of seven women and five men took 11 hours and 16 minutes to find him guilty of murder and conspiracy to murder.

The defendant remained calm as the verdicts were read out.

Judge Mr Justice Globe said he would sentence Sardar tomorrow morning.

Discharging the jury, Mr Justice Globe said: "You have performed your duty with diligence and have clearly been paying attention throughout the whole trial and given the case your closest consideration.

"I would like to thank you on behalf of the court for the time you have taken and the work you have done."

The defendant originally denied to police that he had been "directly or indirectly" involved in bombmaking.

But on the second day of his trial he admitted that fingerprints found on two of four devices linked to the case were his.

Denying all the charges against him, he told the jury that he became involved in the Iraqi insurgency to protect his fellow Sunni Muslims from Shia militias.

He claimed American soldiers had not been his targets, blaming instead "the likes of Dick Cheney, George Bush and Tony Blair" for their deaths.

Sardar was stopped at Heathrow and his fingerprints were taken after he made his way back to the UK from Syria some two months after Sgt Johnson was killed.

In 2012, officers who were searching his London home as part of a separate investigation found an Arab language bombmaking manual with references to Islam on a computer disc.

The device that killed Sgt Johnson did not carry Sardar's fingerprints, but all four bombs had prints from his co-conspirator, Sajjad Adnan.

Prosecutors said the two men had worked together and with others to build and plant them.

Adnan - who is not a British citizen - was arrested after the bombings and handed over to the Iraqi authorities. His current whereabouts are unknown.

Jurors heard that Sgt Johnson told his comrades "Don't let me die here" after he was fatally injured near the road between Baghdad and the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.

Mark Aggers, who was serving as a gunner on the Stryker vehicle, was also left with serious shrapnel wounds, while three further servicemen suffered concussions.

Of the three other bombs linked to Sardar, two were recovered intact and one was safely detonated by a bomb disposal team.

Telegraph.co.uk