A FATHER has told how he came face-to-face with two would-be London tube bombers just weeks before their attempt to blow up the capital in 2005.

Paul Radford boarded a London Underground train with a colleague after a meeting with an architect on a Friday afternoon in June 2005.

The 56-year-old saw two of the men behind the July 21 failed terrorist attack on the tube – ringleader Muktar Said Ibrahim and Hussain Osman – reciting verses from the Koran and clutching beads in the carriage at Southwark.

The pre-construction manager and his co-worker were alarmed and got off at the next stop. Later Mr Radford, who has asked to conceal where he lives in East Sussex, instantly recognised the pair in pictures later released and rang the terror squad at Scotland Yard.

He said: “We were going back to Victoria. It was about 3.30pm and we thought we’d get a pint on the way home.

“It was a warm day and we were chatting away.

“The tube arrived and it was quite full. I caught a guy’s eye and there was a rucksack.

“He was about 6ft 1in tall. Then I looked over his shoulder and this little round-faced guy looked round and smiled a gold-toothed grin at me.

“I thought, ‘Hang on, these two are a bit odd’.

“It was just a gut reaction.”

The sighting was just weeks before the before the July 7 bombings in 2005, in which 52 people were killed, and a botched attempt two weeks later.

During interviews, anti-terrorism officers said themen were “on a recce” and Mr Radford and his friend were “very lucky”.

Speaking publicly for the first time about the experience, Mr Radford hopes it will encourage others to report anything suspicious to the authorities.

In July 2007, Ibrahim, Osman and two others were found guilty of conspiracy to murder.

The lethal hydrogen peroxide and chapati flour explosives failed but left a trail straight to the terrorists.

The home-made explosives, due to detonate on three trains, were thought to have failed partially because of the hot weather.

Mr Radford added: “When you experience something quite so dramatic, it is almost burnt on to your retinas.

“You are still living it, still thinking about it.

“I still get the shivers when I recall that last statement from the police officers to me.”

His comments come as the UK prepares to mark the tenth anniversary of the 7/7 London attacks – described as the country’s worst terrorist attack since the Lockerbie bomb on December 21, 1988.

Sussex University graduate Fiona Stevenson was one of 52 killed in the 2005 bombing.

The 29-year-old solicitor dreamed of becoming a lawyer as a teenager at school and studied at the university before fulfilling her ambition.

She joined specialist criminal law firm Reynolds Dawson, but died just two weeks after buying a new flat in central London.