The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Teenage asylum seeker guilty of bomb attack
FIREBALL: Fiftyone people were injured when device exploded on Tube
A “devious” teenager is facing years in jail for planting a bomb on the Tube which exploded in a massive fireball, injuring 51 passengers at Parsons Green.
Iraqi asylum seeker Ahmed Hassan, 18, plotted to cause carnage in central London while pretending to engage with the anti-terrorism Prevent scheme.
He made his device with 400g of volatile “Mother of Satan” explosives packed in a bucket with 2.2kg of screwdrivers, knives, nuts and bolts.
The Old Bailey heard he wanted to cause “maximum” carnage to avenge the death of his father, who was blown up in Iraq more than 10 years before.
Hassan denied it, saying he only wanted to make a fire to fulfil a “fugitive fantasy” to be chased by Interpol which was inspired by action films.
But judge Mr Justice Haddon-Cave told him: “Ahmed Hassan, you have been found guilty by this jury at the Old Bailey of attempted murder on overwhelming evidence.
“I am now going to discuss with counsel the arrangements and timings for sentencing you.”
The court had heard Hassan told Home Office officials he was trained by Islamic State “to kill” after he arrived in Britain in the back of a lorry in 2015.
He was taken in by foster parents Penny and Ron Jones and studied media and photography at Brooklands College in Weybridge.
But the “shy and polite” young man harboured anger at Britain for bombing Iraq even as he pursued his ambition to be the new Sir David Attenborough.
His college mentor referred him to anti-terror programme Prevent after he said it was his “duty to hate Britain” on receiving a WhatsApp message about an IS donation.
Katie Cable’s concerns were raised again just two months before the bombing when he texted her: “But your country continues to bomb my people.”
And in early September he told her: “It’s almost better to be back in Iraq. It’s better to die because you have heaven.”
While his elderly foster parents were on holiday in Blackpool, Hassan assembled the ingredients for homemade explosives in his bedroom in Sunbury, Surrey.
Hassan claimed he tested a sample on the kitchen table to check it would not explode, although no scorch marks were found.
On the morning of September 15 last year, he left his home and caught a train to Wimbledon carrying his bomb inside a Lidl bag.
He was captured on CCTV going into the station toilets, where he set the bomb to blow in 15 minutes, before boarding the District line.
He got off the train one stop before the bomb partially exploded on the floor of the carriage at Parsons Green.
Moments before, 93 commuters were reading newspapers and sipping cups of coffee.
They ducked for cover and scrambled to escape when a ball of fire rolled down the carriage.
Twenty-three passengers suffered burns, with some describing their hair catching fire and their clothes melting in the blast.
And 28 more suffered cracked ribs and other crush injuries in the stampede to get away from the platform via a narrow stairway.