An Iraqi teenager who planted a bomb on a crowded London tube train previously said he had been trained to kill by Isis, an Old Bailey jury has heard.
Ahmed Hassan is said to have made the admission while claiming asylum in 2016 after arriving in the UK aged 16 on board a lorry via the Channel tunnel, the court in London was told.
Alison Morgan, prosecuting, said Hassan told an immigration official he had been compelled to undergo training with about 1,000 other young people and he had feared members of his family would be killed if he attempted to resist.
Hassan, 18, made the bomb after purchasing two key ingredients, hydrogen peroxide and sulphuric acid, on Amazon, said Morgan. He then packed the bomb with 2.2kg of metal, including knives, nails, bolts and screwdrivers, and carried it on to a train in a bucket concealed inside a Lidl supermarket bag, she said.
The court heard that Hassan bought the hydrogen peroxide with a £20 Amazon voucher he had won for his outstanding work as a media student at Brooklands college in London.
The shrapnel was “designed to be propelled out of the device during the explosion, causing maximum harm and carnage to those in the surrounding area”, said Morgan.
She told the jury that Hassan planted the bomb on a rush-hour District line train in west London last September and that it partially exploded at Parsons Green station.
The main 400g charge of homemade triacetone triperoxide (TATP) was to have been detonated by a battery-powered initiator made from a kitchen timer, a halogen bulb and a match head.
The main charge may have failed to explode because the bulb was not sufficiently embedded in the TATP or because the TATP had been poorly made, Morgan said. “The fact that the device failed to detonate fully was not, the prosecution alleges, as a result of any lack of intention on the part of this defendant.”
There were 93 people in the carriage and some sustained “significant burns” in the explosion, Morgan 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.”
The jury was shown CCTV images of the moment the bomb partially exploded, sending flames along the carriage.
“A large number of eyewitnesses have provided accounts of what took place,” said Morgan. “Most describe a loud bang followed by a fireball or flames moving along the ceiling of the carriage.”
The court heard that one passenger, Jelena Semenjuk, sustained burns to her legs, hands and face. Another, Stephen Nash, recalled seeing a blinding light and feeling like he was inside a furnace.
“Aimee Colville heard a massive bang followed by shards of glass flying through the air. She could smell herself burning and saw that her hair was on fire,” Morgan said.
She said a social worker who accompanied Hassan when he made his asylum application in January 2016 made a note that when asked by an immigration official whether he had ever had training with Islamic State, he replied: “They trained us on how to kill. It was all religion-based.”
Asked how many people he was with during this training, he replied about 1,000. He denied during this interview that Isis had sent him to Europe.
In a subsequent interview, he said he had been taken by force by Isis and had feared that his brother and uncle would be killed if he attempted to resist, the jury heard.
“His claim for asylum was based on his assertion that he was in fear of Islamic State as a result of what had happened to him in Iraq,” Morgan said.
After the bomb partially exploded, Hassan made his way by train to Dover via Brighton, East Sussex, and Ashford, in Kent, changing his clothes a number of times en route, the jury heard. At one point he was captured on CCTV wearing a Chelsea football shirt and a blue cap.
When arrested in Dover, he was in possession of a quantity of matches from which the heads had been removed, and £2,320 in cash. Questioned at that time about the Parsons Green bomb, Hassan accepted he was responsible, Morgan said.
During seven subsequent police interviews in the presence of a solicitor, Hassan refused to explain how he had made the bomb or why he had planted it, answering “no comment” to every question, Morgan said.
Hassan, from Sunbury-on-Thames, Surrey, denies attempted murder and causing an explosion.
The jury heard that he arrived in the UK illegally in October 2015. For a while the children’s charity Barnardos cared for him, and he was then placed with foster parents.
The trial continues.
