Siblings who helped failed Tube bomber given £4.5m legal aid
TWO sisters and their brother who were jailed for helping the July 21 2005 London bombers have been awarded £4.5million in legal aid.
They used part of the public funds to fight off attempts to deport them to Ethiopia where they were born.
The colossal legal aid sum to jihadi sisters Yeshi and Mulu Girma and their brother Esayas is thought to be one of Britain’s biggest.
It enabled them to hire some of the best barristers, who secured reduced sentences at the Court of Appeal.
The siblings, children of a Roman Catholic diplomat, are now free and thought to be living in the UK.
By contrast, the parents of the youngest victim of the Manchester Arena bombing will get just £5,500 each from the official compensation scheme.
Lisa and Andrew Roussos were offered £11,000 after their daughter SaffieRose, eight, was killed in the terror attack that claimed 22 lives in 2017.
Others who were horrifically injured have faced delays in receiving their payments. Some have only received interim sums of £1,000 from the Criminal Injufailed ries Compensation Authority. Yeshi Girma, 43, was the wife of bomber Hussein Osman – one of four fanatics who tried to detonate suicide bombs on Tube trains and a bus two weeks after terrorists had killed 52 passengers in the July 7 attacks in 2005.
A huge death toll was only averted in the 21/7 attack because the bombers to mix the chemical components of their devices properly.
Yeshi, who has three children by Osman, knew what he was planning but did not alert police.
After Osman’s bomb partially exploded at Shepherd’s Bush, Yeshi and Esayas, 33, helped him escape to France. He was arrested eight days later in Rome.
Before he fled, Mulu, 35, a fashion model and student, treated a burn on his leg caused by corrosive liquid that leaked from his rucksack bomb.
Had the siblings informed the police of Osman’s whereabouts, the death of innocent Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes, mistakenly shot by officers hunting the bomber the day after the botched attack, might have been avoided.
The trio showed no remorse and protested their innocence during a four-month trial in 2008.
Yeshi was jailed for 15 years and her younger siblings were each jailed for ten years. Judge Paul Worsley told them the sentences he was able to pass by law were ‘woefully inadequate’. Figures obtained by Freedom of Information requests to the Ministry of Justice show that the siblings received £4.39million in legal aid.
Yeshi then used a further £24,000 in public funds to get her term reduced to 11 years at the Court of Appeal. Esayas and Mulu each had their ten-year sentences halved, costing taxpayers £50,000.
All three have used more than £50,000 in legal aid to block extradition attempts.
Mulu secured a job as a trainee customer services assistant at Southwark Council, and even appeared on the cover of the London authority’s magazine.
Harry Fletcher, of the Victims’ Rights Campaign, said: ‘These are extraordinary legal aid payments, especially when compared to the unacceptably low amounts awarded to victims.
‘I would urge the Government to review the legal aid scheme for convicted criminals and the pitifully low compensation paid to victims of serious crimes.’ Last year, the Mail told how the badly injured survivors of the Manchester Arena attack, as well as the relatives of the dead, received paltry amounts in compensation.
Mrs Roussos, 50, who spent six weeks in a coma and only learned of her daughter’s death from husband Andrew when she regained consciousness, said: ‘We were offered £5,500 each for the death of Saffie. It’s a complete insult.’
Their daughter, from Leyland,
Lancashire, was the youngest to die as she left a concert by pop star Ariana Grande on May 22, 2017, with her mother and sister.
Survivors and the bereaved initially struggled for help with legal representation at an inquest due to be held this year.
They were given an intrusive questionnaire demanding details of all assets worth over £500. It was described as ‘cruel and intrusive’ by the charity Inquest, which supports bereaved families. They have finally been awarded aid.
But grieving relatives of the eight victims of the 2017 London Bridge terror atrocity did not receive a penny from the Legal Aid Agency – even though it granted aid to jihadi bride Shamima Begum, 19, so she can fight the decision to revoke her British citizenship.
A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: ‘Without a lawyer, a defendant could argue their trial was unfair and any conviction could be overturned.
‘Those who receive legal aid may have to pay it back.’
‘Extraordinary payments’