A teenage asylum-seeker who built a ‘Mother of Satan’ nail bomb in the bedroom of his foster home before trying to blow up a tube train is facing a lengthy jail term after he was convicted of attempted murder today.
Ahmed Hassan, 18, tried to kill 93 people by setting off a ‘bucket bomb’ at Parsons Green station in west London last September. Luckily the device failed to properly detonate, but still left 30 passengers with serious burns.
Hassan had left his native Iraq and travelled through Turkey, Italy and France before getting into the UK on the back of the lorry coming through the Channel Tunnel.
After being looked after in a charity-run shelter, he was taken in by foster parents Penelope and Ronald Jones in Sunbury-on-Thames, Surrey and sent to a local college.
But while his foster parents were away on holiday last summer, he studied YouTube videos on how to make explosives, before building a bomb from household objects including Tupperware boxes, a vase and 2.2kg of knives, screwdrivers and nails.
Ahmed Hassan, 18, planted the 400g of explosives on a packed District Line carriage on September 15 last year. It failed to properly detonate by still injured 30 passengers
The bucket bomb, wrapped in a Lidl cool bag, was cooked up at Hassan’s foster home
The ‘Mother of Satan’ bomb was packed with nails, screws and drill tips to maximise injuries
These household knives were also found inside it after Hassan viewed a YouTube bomb video
Many passengers were badly burned, but it was only a ‘matter of luck’ that scores were not killed, prosecutors have said.
The disturbing case will raise questions of authorities after it emerged Hassan told immigration officials he had been ‘trained to kill’ by ISIS, and said to a teacher it was his ‘duty to hate Britain’.
Barnardo’s worker Youseff Habibi told jurors he caught Hassan listening to an Arabic song on YouTube along the lines of ‘coming to the slaughter in your own home’ when he was living in a children’s home in Surrey.
He later claimed he had made up the story about having been in an ISIS training camp in a bid to get asylum in Britain, but a jury rejected his claims that the bomb plot was a ‘fantasy’.
The Old Bailey has heard Hassan built his fearsome bomb in his bedroom during the school holidays and used an Amazon gift token he won for being Student of the Year at Brooklands Sixth Form College in Weybridge, Surrey.
Video footage showed him carrying out experiments with a mobile phone in a back garden.
On September 15 last year, Hassan took his homemade device, wrapped in a Lidl cool bag, from his home in Sunbury to Wimbledon before leaving it on a District Line train.
The device’s detonator went off, sending a fireball through the carriage, but it did not ignite the explosive.
Hassan crisscrossed London and the South East, disposing of his phone and changing his clothes, as he made his way to the Port of Dover after the bomb went off
Hassan had been taken in by foster parents Penelope and Ronald Jones after coming to the UK as a child refugee
The couple were awarded MBEs for fostering at least 268 people over three decades – but, speaking shortly after the bombing, friends said they were considering stopping fostering
Describing the moment it went off, prosecutor Alison Morgan: ‘The partial explosion caused a large fireball. Some in the carriage were caught by the flames and sustained significant burns, 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 the carriage. Those in close proximity to the device may well have been killed.’
Meanwhile Hassan had changed his clothes, donning a Chelsea football shirt, and was crisscrossing the South East on four different trains on his way to the port of Dover.
An alert border police officer spotted and challenged him before he could board a ferry to the continent.
He was found to have researched what happened to his bomb by looking up Parsons Green on the BBC website on his phone as he made his way to Dover. Radical material was found at his home.
The scene of devastation was left behind after the device partially detonated on the train
The kitchen timer used as an initiator mechanism, in addition to a battery and a halogen bulb
A memory stick contained eight nasheeds- Arabic chants – which included the lines: ‘O State of Islam attack the creed of kufr [infidels], and crush the soldiers’ gang.
‘Send torrents of terror, pull out slaughter, break the shackles, wage a battle that will make a child’s hair go grey, scorch the bodies with a blazing fire, a sight never imagined before.’
His foster parents, Mr and Mrs Jones, knew nothing of his plans and were said to have been devastated by his actions.
In the days after the bombing, friends said the couple were considering giving up fostering.
The kind-hearted couple were awarded have MBEs in 2010 for fostering at least 268 people over three decades, many of whom came from some of the world’s poorest countries.
The mystery boy who tried to slaughter commuters: How Hassan’s web of lies mean questions still surround his past
By Nick Fagge and Duncan Gardham
Arriving in the UK at the age of 16, Ahmed Hassan’s hatred of the West had been simmering for years.
Portraying himself as an orphan from Iraq whose mother was shot while his taxi driver father died in a bombing raid, there was sympathy for his plight.
But the teenager spun a web of lies from the moment he arrived in the UK on the back of lorry through the Channel tunnel two years ago.
He lied to UK immigration officials several times, disappeared on mysterious trips to Wales and had a secret social life hidden from his foster carers.
Even his true identity is in question with no record of a man bearing his name and date of birth found by Iraqi officials.
Hassan is presented with his ‘student of the year’ award at Brooklands College, Weybridge
Claiming he was born in June 1999 into a poor Kurdish family in Baghdad, Ahmed Hassan said he lost his mother to gunshot wounds shortly after the 2003 invasion.
Struggling to make ends meet his father, a taxi driver, forced the young boy and his brother to move frequently as he could not afford the rent.
Hassan missed a year of school because of the war, but boasted that he shined as a bright student when he started classes aged seven.
He described his devastatation when his father was killed in a US bombing strike in 2006 and he was then taken in by his uncle, moving out of the Iraqi capital to the provincial city of Jalawla, north east of Baghdad.
Hassan told the Old Bailey: ‘I was told he [my father] died in an explosion while he was working as a taxi driver.
‘He used to go to work and come back evenings and he just didn’t come back. It was very difficult, I didn’t understand much of what was going on, I was in a state of confusion.’
Hassan began earning money at the age of 12, loading and unloading vegetables from trucks at the Iraq-Iran border after school.
Hassan scrawled ‘bored, bored, bored’ on his bedroom door on the summer he built the bomb
He left school aged 15, and when ISIS was at the height of its power he crossed the border to Turkey, boarded a ship to Italy, then a train to France where he joined the hundreds of migrants living in the chaos of Calais seeking a new life in Britain.
After two months in the notorious Calais Jungle, he slipped into the UK in October 2015 in the back of a lorry via the Channel Tunnel.
That same month he was placed in the care of Surrey County Council, who put him in a Barnardo’s-run hostel, the Bay Tree, in Horley.
Here Hassan was spotted by two members of staff watching ISIS videos on Facebook and listening to a jihadi chant in Arabic saying: ‘We are coming to you with slaughter, coming into your own home’.
And when questioned by Home Office officials the following January, he openly declared his association with Islamic State proclaiming; ‘I was recruited by ISIS for three months.
‘They trained us on how to kill and it was all religious based.’
However, he later claimed the terror group had taken him by force and threatened his uncle and brother before denying that he was an ISIS agent sent to Europe.
His foster mother, Penelope Jones, had received an MBE from the Queen for her fostering work
He then changed his story again, claiming in court this month that he had made up a link with ISIS after learning in Calais that it would help his application for asylum in Britain.
Under cross-examination, the prosecution accused Hassan of being a ‘proficient liar’ after he admitted not telling the truth to immigration officials in 2016.
Hassan said: ‘I never lied. I made up a story for the Home Office to accept me.
‘Because I am from a wealthy safe area of northern Iraq and if I told the truth, my only reason to leave that country was to further my studies, I felt I had to make up something strong.’
In April 2016, Hassan was accepted at Brooklands Sixth Form College in Weybridge, Surrey, to learn English and prepare for further education.
He was placed in foster care, moving in with Ron and Penny Jones at their terrace house in Sunbury, Surrey.
Police closed down the foster family’s entire street in the wake of the bombing last September
His behaviour was marked with violent mood swings – snapping pens and storming out of class – flashbacks, boredom and shakes – classic symptoms of trauma.
‘It is my duty to hate Britain [because of what happened to my family],’ he told his teacher and mentor Katie Cable, the Old Bailey heard.
However, he was seen as exceptionally bright and was awarded ‘Student of the Year’ after receiving distinction in nine pieces of work at the end of the 2015-16 academic year.
The court heard how, at college, Hassan had wanted to be a wildlife photographer and had aspirations of being the next David Attenborough.
Just weeks before priming his homemade bomb on a busy District Line tube he texted the teacher to complain about UK air attacks on ISIS positions in Syria and Iraq, saying: ‘Your country continues to bomb my people daily.’
When Ms Cable saw a message on his phone from the Islamic State accepting a cash donation she reported him to the de-radicalisation programme Prevent.
Hassan was constantly talking on the phone and reading messages and would spend up to five-days away in Wales, visiting ‘friends’ he had met in the Calais Jungle.
But it was in his suburban foster home, while the caring couple who had taken in him were away on an August break to Blackpool, that Hassan built the terrifying bomb – stuffed with nails, bolts and screws – that he placed on a packed rush hour tube train in September last year to kill and maim in a warped act of revenge.