Iranian given asylum in UK is jailed over plot to bomb police
A GUN fanatic from Iran with a hatred of police and authority was jailed for 15 years yesterday for plotting a bomb atrocity.
A domestic abuse investigation ‘sowed the seeds’ of a personal grudge that took over Ashkan Ebrahimi’s life.
The 33-year-old, who was granted ayslum in Britain, stalked police officers, a district judge, a female solicitor and social worker. He also enrolled on a science course where he caused alarm by showing an unusual interest in chemicals.
Tutors tipped off police and they found bomb-making ingredients at his home as well as high-powered air rifles, crossbows, swords and knives.
He had also been using listening devices, telephone scanning equipment, jammers and trackers in pursuit of dozens of potential victims.
Ebrahimi is believed to have come to Britain from Iran illegally in 2009 and was granted leave to stay after seeking asylum. In 2014 police were called to deal with a domestic incident between Ebrahimi and his partner, who is the mother of his young child. It led to a nonmolestation order from a county court judge and the seizure of Ebrahimi’s legally-held weapons. A jury at Bradford Crown Court was told this bred a hatred of police and authority and desire for revenge.
‘His obsessive personality caused him to research and plan that revenge in great detail,’ said Dafydd Enoch QC, prosecuting. ‘He found out information about his targets, photographed their homes, followed them and made notes about them.’
He researched bombmaking, bought chemicals and acquired kit for making explosive devices in a lab at his flat in Halifax.
Ebrahimi, who represented himself during his trial, enrolled on a GCSE science course at Calderdale College a month before officers from the North East counter-terrorism unit searched his home. Videos and books on how to make explosives, fuses, detonators and gunpowder were found.
Police discovered Ebrahimi had conducted extensive research on 38 people, mainly serving police officers. He wrote in one Facebook post: ‘Every single minute the hate is growing more and more. I haaaaaaaate the police, that’s all I know in my life.’
He posted pictures of himself with a rifle and posing in front of a Nazi flag. He also saved Facebook profiles relating to ‘a number of his targets’ and their families and drove to some of
‘Explosives and detonators’
their homes, which he photographed. He visited the judge who issued the non-molestation order and the home of a chief inspector. The solicitor who represented his former partner was also on his list.
Ebrahimi, who declined to give evidence in his defence, was found guilty of stalking, possession of explosives with intent to endanger life and possession of an offensive weapon. He was given a 20-year extended sentence comprising a 15-year jail term and an extra five-year licence period because of the danger he presents.
He was made the subject of an indefinite restraining order that bans him from contact with 15 named individuals, going into nine specific streets, approaching within 25 metres of any police station in West Yorkshire and contacting any member of staff at Bradford Crown Court.
Judge David Hatton QC said Ebrahimi was clearly assembling a bomb, telling him: ‘The alarm and distress caused to those who gained knowledge of your activities, and whom you were seemingly targeting, will have been immeasurable and their daily lives severely compromised.’
Detective Chief Inspector Warren Stevenson, who led the inquiry, said he believed that Ebrahimi would have ‘eventually executed his plans in harming a police officer’.