Stephen Nulty 11:59 am on March 8, 2018
Tags: 0ld Bailey, ,   

Thursday 8 March 2018 – Parsons Tube Bombing (15 Sep 2017) – Update: Ahmed Hassan goes on trial

THIS POST FEATURES IN SOURCES & FURTHER READING ARTICLES RELATED TO THE TRIAL AS IT IS ONGOING.  I WILL WRITE ANOTHER POST ON THE CONCLUSION OF THE TRIAL

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Ahmed Hassan, the accused in last September’s tube bombing at Parsons Green in London, has gone on trial at the Old Bailey in London. Hassan, who is 18, is said to have packed 400g of TATP explosives along with shrapnel into a package.  It was then left on board a Tube train on a timer as he is said to have fled the scene.  Fortunately the device only partly detonated on the rush-hour train with 93 passengers in the carriage containing the bomb, including many children on their way home from school.  Despite not completely detonating the device turned the carriage into a “furnace engulfed in flames.” Many were left with serious burns or crush injuries in the attempt to escape but miraculously no-one was killed. Prosecutor Alison Morgan told the court: “Had the device fully detonated it is inevitable that serious injury and significant damage would have been caused within the carriage.”


The jurors were told that Mr Hassan came to the UK in 2015 on a lorry through the Channel Tunnel. He was 16 at the time and  claimed asylum on the basis that he was in “fear of the Islamic State.”  Mr Hassan, however, was recruited by IS. He told Home Office officials in 2016: “They trained us on how to kill. It was all religious-based.”  Mr Hassan told the Home Office that he left the Islamic State when Iraqi soldiers took over the territory and told them to go home.  He claimed that IS told him that he would be killed if he resisted and that members of his family would be killed.  He denied that he still had links to IS or that they had sent him to the UK.  Hindsight is always 20/20 but it seems incredible that the Home Office and the Immigration Service in the UK allowed Mr Hassan to remain in the UK.  Whether he was no longer connected with Islamic State seems irrelevant as he had admitted that he had joined Islamic State and that alone should be enough to deny anyone permission to remain in the UK.

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Furthermore, once in the UK and living in a Barnados home, he was seen listening to an Arabic-language song with lyrics “calling to arms” with lines such as: “We are coming with you to the slaughter […] in your home/country.”  He later moved to live with an adoptive family, which the prosecution claimed was an “window of opportunity”  to research online how to make explosives.  He also used a friend’s address to order hydrogen peroxide and sulphuric acid for his bomb on Amazon.  He is said to have used a £20 Amazon gift voucher he had won for outstanding work as a media student at Brooklands collage in London.  He also bought metal items to use as shrapnel from Asda and Aldi, packing a total of 2.2kg of screwdrivers, knives, nails and bolts into the package with, as the prosecution and logic demonstrates, was “designed to be propelled out of the device during the explosion, causing maximum harm and carnage to those in the surrounding area.”

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The court heard that Mr Hassan left his home in Sunbury, Surrey before 7am on 15 September 2017 and took a train from there to Wimbledon in south London, where he set the timer on his device in a public toilet on the station concourse before taking a Tube train on the District Line.  The accused left the device on the train when he got off at Putney Bridge, one stop before Parsons Green.  The prosecution emphasised the accused’s intent arguing that: “At any point, should he wanted to, he could have stopped the timer. He could have pulled the wires out of the device. He could have stopped the detonation.  The CCTV footage from inside the carriage shows that at no stage did the defendant reach inside the bag to do anything.”


What caused the device not to fully detonate when the timer counted down is unknown but the initiator may have come loose or it simply may have not been well constructed.  However, as an explosive expert told the court, it was “a matter of luck” that it did not fully explode.  The initiator was constructed from a kitchen timer,  halogen bulb and a match head.  The bulb may have also not been embedded enough in the TATP to detonate it completely.  The prosecution said that “the fact that the device failed to detonate fully was not as a result of any lack of intention on the part of the defendant.”


The resulting partial explosion was described by many in the carriage as a loud bang and sent flames along the carriage.  The prosecution said: “Many ran in fear and panic. They were fortunate. Had the device fully detonated it is inevitable that serious injury and significant damage would have been caused within that carriage. Those in close proximity to the device may well have been killed.”


Mr Hassan is then said to have fled, searching the BBC news website for reports on the explosion and carnage that he expected to happen.  When he realised it had failed he made for Dover in Kent, a port where he hoped to take a ferry to France.  He was arrested at the port with over £2,000 in cash..  The court was told that he admitted his guilt to police, but he now denies the charges of attempted murder and using TATP to cause an explosion that was likely to endanger life.

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The case of Ahmed Hassan demonstrates the problems of accepting immigrants from areas controlled or previously controlled by Islamic State.  Hassan was only 16 at the time he came to the UK and was clearly only a child when recruited by IS under, he claims, threats of violence against him and his family if he didn’t join IS.  This of course does happen but it seems that the Home Office took Hassan’s word as true when he told them this in support of his asylum request.  I have no problem with allowing asylum seekers from war-torn regions who are fleeing IS terror but allowing those in who have fought for Islamic State, regardless of whether they say they were coerced, is extremely questionable and risky.  It seems clear that Ahmed Hassan continued his extremist views once in the UK which should have prompted action to remove him from the country.  I wonder whether it would have been justifiable to return Mr Hassan to Iraq.  He claimed that he  escaped from Islamic State control when Iraqi soldiers retook their territory.  If this is the case then why couldn’t he return to his family.  He claimed they were under threat but wouldn’t him fleeing to the West have put them under even greater retaliation by IS?

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Ahmed Hasson’s alleged attempt to blow up a London Tube train came after several terror attacks in the UK in 2017:

  • 22 March –  Westminster Bridge vehicle and stabbing attack. Khalid Masood kills four people and injures dozens more. After crashing his vehicle through people on Westminster Bridge he runs into Parliament Square and stabs a police officer outside Parliament to death.  His attack lasted just 82 seconds before he was shot dead.
  • 22 May – Manchester Arena suicide bombing. Salman Abedi killed 22 people when he detonated his device outside the Manchester Arena at the end of a concert by American singer Ariana Grande.  More than 200 people were injured and it was the deadliest terror attack in the UK since the 7/7 bombings in London in July 2005.  Many of the victims were children, with the youngest being 8-year-old Saffie Roussos.
  • 3 June – London Bridge/Borough Market vehicle and knife attack.  Three men, Rachid Redouane, Khuram Butt and Youssef Zaghba, drove into pedestrians on London Bridge before jumping out of their vehicle and entering nearby Borough Market – the oldest street market in London dating back nearly a thousand years.  The three men were wearing what turned out to be fake suicide vests.  Eight people were killed and all three were shot dead by police.
  • 19 June – Finsbury Park attack.  A vehicle driven by Darren Osborne ploughed into Muslim worshippers outside the Muslim Welfare House and near the Finsbury Park Mosque in London, injuring eight.  Another man died.  He had collapsed moments prior to the attack and was being treated on the street by fellow worshippers when the vehicle struck.  Mr Osborne was arrested and last month was sentenced to life imprisonment at Woolwich Crown Court in London.
  • 15 September – Parsons Green Tube bombing. A device partially detonates on board a commuter train at Parsons Green station in London.  The device, allegedly planted by Ahmed Hassan, injures 22 people but thankfully kills no-one.  Mr Hassan was arrested attempting to flee the country.

The level of terror attacks in the UK last year was disturbing but could have been even worse but for the work of the anti-terror police and security services.  The Guardian today was reporting today that 412 people were arrested in 2017 on terror-related charges – a rise of 58% on the previous year and a record number.  The Home Office figures show that 12 people were arrested in connection with the Westminster Bridge attack, 23 people linked to the Manchester attack, 21 connected with the London Bridge attack, and one in relation to the Finsbury Park attack.  Seven people were arrested in connection with the Parsons Green attack.

Of all those arrested, 135 people were charged with an offence – 110 of those terror-related.  More than half, 228 people, were released without charge while 33 were released on bail pending further investigation and 13 faced alternative action.  As of today 29 of the 110 charged with terror-related offences have been prosecuted and all have been convicted.  Reflected in the fact that four of the five terror attacks in the UK in 2017 were connected to Islamic extremism, the Home Office figures show that 86% of those arrested held Islamic extremist views, with 9% classed as rightwing extremists and 5% classed as “other ideologies.”

Sources & Further Reading: