Terrorist 7/7 London bombings and 9/11 plotter 'could walk UK streets in days'

Daily Mirror

4 days ago

Haroon Aswat, 50, originally from West Yorkshire, could soon be freed despite admitting his role in the attack on the World Trade Center and the 7/7 London bombings
A terrorist who helped mastermind 9/11 and the 7/7 London bombings could soon be freed in the UK despite being a 'risk to national security'.
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Haroon Aswat, 50, was jailed for 20 years in 2015 in New York over terror offences and deported back to the UK in 2022. He has since been detained in a secure hospital, with his release expected soon to his family in West Yorkshire.
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He had been involved in setting up a 'terrorist training camp' in the US with radical cleric Abu Hamza in the 1990s and has admitted his role in 9/11 as well as the London bombings in 2005. It comes as Putin warns of nuclear war after unleashing another night of hell on Ukraine.
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He admitted to a psychiatrist 'I am a terrorist' before he was deported back to the UK and US court documents reveal that he also confessed to being a 'mastermind behind the (9/11) attacks and a 2005 attack in the UK', reports The Sun.
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Aswat has also threatened to kill Jews, Christians and other Muslim groups, and it is feared that he could be released onto streets in the UK without a full risk assessment within days due to a legal loophole blocking him from stringent checks.
Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick reportedly said: 'This despicable man was behind one of the most deadly attacks in modern history. He should never experience freedom again."
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At a hearing in April, the Metropolitan Police applied for a 'notification order', meaning Aswat would be subject to certain requirements about informing police of his whereabouts and personal life upon his release.
In a ruling, Mr Justice Jay approved the order for 30 years, which Aswat did not oppose. But he said that despite a psychiatrist's finding in 2022 that there 'remains the risk of Islamic violent extremism' by Aswat, no risk assessment had been carried out.
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In his judgment, Mr Justice Jay added: 'Although (the psychiatrist) did not conduct a full risk assessment for terrorist risk, he identified 15 of the 22 relevant factors … as being likely to be present.'
He added: 'No formal terrorist risk assessment has been carried out in the United Kingdom since the defendant's return here. The circumstances of his detention have precluded that. However, on the basis of the material which is available, the defendant has been assessed by various police officers … that he remains a risk to national security.'
He said that the psychiatrist had concluded 'there remains the risk of Islamic violent extremism-motivated targeted terrorist offending behaviour given his threats to kill Jews, Christians and certain groups of Muslims … (t)here is also a risk of him influencing other vulnerable individuals, as when he is in an abnormal mental state his religious extremist rhetoric is amplified by mental illness'.
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And a US District Court document shows how he admitted his role in terrorist activities. It stated: 'In March 2017 the defendant stated, 'if you think I am a terrorist, I don't shy away from my responsibility' and also stated he was a mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks and a 2005 terrorist attack in the UK.'
The papers also reveal that Aswat was in contact with Osama bin Laden and trained in al-Queda camps in Afghanistan before the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001. Police also traced 20 calls made by 7/7 bombers to a phone connected to Aswat.
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In his witness statement Det Chief Supt Gareth Rees, head of operations for the Met's SO15 Counter Terrorism Command, said of Aswat: 'He has spoken positively of his time with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and expressed aspirations to reconnect with them.
'Based on my experience, this is conduct which gives me grave concerns about the risk which the defendant poses to the UK's national security and to the public. The assessment of medical practitioners is that he currently has capacity to make complex decisions and understand complex restrictions when mentally stable.However, he may temporarily lose capacity if he were to relapse into a psychotic state.'
Aswat, who is now 50, helped to set up a terrorist training camp in Oregon and Seattle in the US from 1999, which the American government described as a camp 'to train young impressionable men in America to fight and kill so that they could travel to Afghanistan to join forces with al Qaida'.
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He then travelled to Afghanistan to receive training from al Qaida in 2001, and in 2005 was arrested in Zambia and extradited to the UK. In August that year, he was then arrested in the UK because of an arrest warrant being issued for him in the US, and was eventually extradited.
In March 2015, he pleaded guilty in the US to one count of conspiracy to provide support to a foreign terrorist organisation before January 1 2000, and to another charge related to providing material to a terrorist organisation.
He was jailed for 20 years, but did not serve the full sentence due to 'periods of detention in this country awaiting extradition' being taken into account, Mr Justice Jay said.
A Government spokesman reportedly said: "Protecting our national security is the very first priority of this government and if any individual poses a threat to that security, the police and intelligence services have a range of powers they can apply to deal with that threat.
"We will always do whatever is necessary inside the law to protect the public from any risk posed by former terrorist offenders or people of terrorist concern." The Mirror has contacted the Ministry of Justice for comment.