Terror experts nearly closed case on Tube bomber 10 days before attack
EXPERTS considered removing the Parsons Green bomber from a list of extremists ten days before he carried out the terror attack, a review has found.
Ahmed Hassan, then 18, injured 51 after detonating an improvised explosive device on the London Underground in September last year.
Yesterday it emerged officials on Britain’s flagship counter-radicalisation programme had discussed giving him the all-clear less than a fortnight before he attempted mass murder.
A review into how much the authorities knew about Hassan revealed a series of blunders by police and council chiefs.
Mistakes included failing to grasp the risks posed by his mental health problems, not consulting a national deradicalisation expert, and the lack of a plan to monitor his progress.
Sir Philip Rutnam, the Home Office’s most senior mandarin, outlined the errors in a letter to Labour MP Yvette Cooper, chairman of the Commons’ home affairs select committee.
Hassan arrived in the UK in October 2015 as an unaccompanied child migrant and was placed in the care of Surrey county council.
In January 2016 he told an immigration official he had been trained to kill by the Islamic State terror group in Iraq, his trial heard.
He later told officials IS fighters made him watch executions, and also disclosed his mental health problems.
Despite these early warnings, police and council officials running Surrey’s Preventing Violent Extremism scheme did not formally discuss how to deradicalise him until June 2016. He was then placed on the Government’s Channel programme, which works with the UK’s most dangerous potential terrorists. However, the Home Office inquiry found that no formal plan was put in place in his 15 months on the scheme. It also found that Surrey county council never asked a nationally recognised mentor to work with Hassan and that the Channel panel failed to fully investigate after Hassan repeatedly went missing.
There were nine Channel meetings to discuss Hassan overall. Although concerns were raised about his ‘demeanour and behaviour’ in January 2017, there were no more meetings to discuss him until June.
On September 5 – ten days before the attack – the panel decided that Hassan’s case could soon be closed.
Sir Philip said: ‘Considering the ongoing vulnerability assessment and intelligence update, the Channel Panel was in the process of considering closure of [his] case.’
Hassan, now 19, was convicted of attempted murder and jailed for life with a minimum term of 34 years.
Miss Cooper said: ‘This account sets out a series of failings in the operation of the Channel programme in the case of Ahmed Hassan.’
Security minister Ben Wallace said ‘swift action’ had been taken to address the issues raised.