A man arrested as part of the investigation into the July 7, 2005 London bombings pleaded guilty on Monday to possessing an al Qaeda handbook.

Khalid Khaliq, 34, was one of four people arrested in May last year by officers investigating the attacks, which killed 52 commuters on London transport. The other three, including the wife of one of the bombers, were freed without charge.

Khaliq, a native of Beeston in Leeds, the town that was home to several of the bombers, pleaded guilty to possessing "a document or record, namely the al Qaeda training manual, containing information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism".

Although the charge did not refer to the 2005 attacks, the police said last year it was a result of evidence obtained during the investigation into the strikes, the first Islamist suicide bombings in Western Europe.

Khaliq is due to be sentenced on Tuesday at Leeds Crown Court. The maximum sentence for the charge is 10 years.