‘Parsons Green bomber followed online guide to make explosives’

AN Iraqi teenager used a ‘very easy’ YouTube recipe to make the Parsons Green bomb while bored during school holidays, a court heard yesterday.

Ahmed Hassan, 18, said he stayed up all night to put the finishing touches to his device while his foster parents were sleeping upstairs. The asylum seeker, who denies attempted murder, told his Old Bailey trial yesterday he had fantasised about being a fugitive like in the movies. On the day of the explosion on September 15 last year, his unsuspecting foster father Ron Jones came downstairs at 6.30am to ask him why he had not slept, the jury was told.

Hassan did not bother to hide the bomb containing 400g of the explosive TATP, known as ‘Mother of Satan’. He then walked out of his foster home in Sunbury, Surrey, without saying a word to the carers – who had taken him in aged 15 – who were unaware of his actions. Less than two hours later, the bomb exploded, injuring 30 people at Parsons Green station in West London.

He told jurors that he found a ‘very easy’ YouTube recipe to make TATP, adding: ‘It was a fantasy, I was bored. I wanted to receive attention.’ He said he had been watching lots of movies and documentaries, which put ‘the idea of being a fugitive into my head’.

Hassan claimed the bomb was never meant to explode but Alison Morgan, prosecuting, said he was a ‘prolific liar’ who was angry that his asylum claim had not been accepted and blamed Britain for the war in Iraq.

The trial continues.