Parsons Green tube bomber was referred to Prevent programme

A teenage Iraqi asylum seeker who planted a bomb on a crowded London underground train had been involved in the government’s Prevent deradicalisation programme for more than a year, it emerged at the end of his Old Bailey trial.

Ahmed Hassan was found guilty on Friday of attempted murder after his homemade device partially detonated at Parsons Green in west London during the morning rush hour in September.

Hassan stared at the ground as the jury returned its verdict after less than a day of deliberations. The judge, Mr Justice Haddon-Cave, said he was convicted on “overwhelming evidence”. He will be sentenced next week.

Thirty people were injured in Hassan’s attack. The explosion sent a fireball through the tube carriage and burned passengers’ skin, hair and clothing. Survivors spoke of feeling their faces being both burned and lacerated by flying glass.

Hassan, 18, who had been living with foster parents in Sunbury-on-Thames, Surrey, admitted making the bomb by mixing a powerful but unstable explosive using hydrogen peroxide. He also made an initiator using a kitchen timer.

He told the London court that he had made the device because he was “very bored, very depressed, very confused” and wanted to draw attention to himself.

The disclosure that Hassan had been referred to the Prevent programme will heighten concerns over the effectiveness of the government scheme, which aims to stop young Muslims from being radicalised.

The security minister, Ben Wallace, acknowledged that there were “lessons to be learned” from the case while Surrey county council issued an apology after the verdict was returned. The Surrey police and crime commissioner also said there were “opportunities missed” to thwart the attack. David Munro told the BBC: “It is obvious we were too slow.”

A review of Surrey’s Prevent scheme has been commissioned.

Hassan had denied attempted murder and also denied an alternative charge of causing an explosion, maintaining that he had mixed the explosive in a way that would ensure the device burned rather than exploded – a claim that the jury unanimously rejected.

The court heard that both Hassan’s parents were dead by the time he was six, and that he blamed Britain for his father’s death in an airstrike on Baghdad. He was also upset by ongoing airstrikes, sending a text message to one of his lecturers: “Your country continues to bomb my people daily.”

Alison Morgan, prosecuting, told the jury that Hassan had been motivated by “anger and hatred” against Britain.

The London court heard that Hassan had told Home Office immigration officials that he had been abducted by Islamic State in Iraq and had spent three months “being trained how to kill”.

Hassan later said that he had fabricated this account in an attempt to win sympathy. He said that he did not want to admit that since his father’s death he and his elder brother had been raised by an uncle in a relatively safe and prosperous town north of Baghdad.

Nevertheless, he was referred to the Prevent programme in Surrey, and then subjected to the Channel counter-radicalisation initiative, which was intended to drawn him away from terrorist impulses.

After the verdict, Commander Dean Haydon, the head of Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorism command, said that Hassan – a “devious and cunning” young man – had given every impression that he was engaging positively with the deradicalisation initiatives.

“It’s only good fortune that it did [only] partially detonate,” he said. “If it had detonated properly it would have killed many people on that tube and seriously injured many others.

Wallace said there were “lessons to be learned” from the case but praised authorities for their work in the investigation.

Surrey county council issued an apology, saying that its deradicalisation work had fallen short. “‘Our work with other agencies in this case wasn’t as good as it should have been and we’re sorry for our part in that,” a spokesman said.

The council also apologised to the foster parents Penelope and Ronald Jones, acknowledging that they had taken Hassan in under “tough circumstances”.

On the day of the attack, Hassan travelled by train to Wimbledon, south-west London. He boarded the District Line train and alighted at Putney Bridge, one stop before Parsons Green, leaving the bag containing the bomb on board.

The bomb partly detonated shortly after the train arrived at Parsons Green station, but most of the explosive did not go off. There were 93 people inside the carriage: the jury was shown CCTV images of the moment they were engulfed by the fireball.

Survivors told the court of the attack’s lasting impact. One woman, identified in court only as Miss S, wept as she described having suffered severe burns on her legs, as well as burns to her hands and face. She is still being treated six months after the explosion.

She told the jury she heard a bang, followed by screaming. “I had burns. My knees were bad, my face was all burned. My coat was burning, my tights melted.”

Victoria Holloway, another passenger, said: “I heard a really loud bang and then I heard a whoosh – like the sound of a Bunsen burner when you light it. The flames were around my legs, and then they seemed to be sucked away from me.”

Hassan changed his clothes four times as he made his way to the port of Dover, where he was arrested 24 hours after the attack. He told his lawyers that after watching the Tom Cruise action film Mission: Impossible he harboured a fantasy of being pursued across Europe by Interpol as he made his way back to Iraq.

The court heard that Hassan had spent three days in hospital in 2016 being treated for depression. A report prepared by a psychologist on behalf of his defence, which suggested that he may have Asperger’s syndrome, was ruled inadmissible and not read to the jury.