On July 7, 2005, a series of coordinated suicide bombings rocked London, England. Devices were detonated at three locations on the London Underground, including two on the Circle Line and one on the Piccadilly Line and a fourth on the upper level of a double-decker bus in Tavistock Square.
Over 700 people were injured and 52 were killed in the largest terror attack on U.K. soil since the Lockerbie plane bombing in 1988.
Four Islamic extremists were linked to the attack, and several others were arrested. One of those arrested after the bombings was Haroon Rashid Aswat. Aswat was apprehended in late July after he fled to Zimbabwe, as reported by CBS News on July 27, 2005:
Meanwhile, authorities in Zambia have detained a British man sought in connection with the July 7 London bombings, a Zambian official said.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Haroon Rashid Aswat, 31, had been detained in the Zambian border town of Livingstone after he crossed from Zimbabwe. The official declined to give any other details.
British investigators believe Aswat had been in phone contact with several of the four suicide bombers who killed themselves and 52 others in the attacks. The Los Angeles Times and other news media have reported that he was detained by Zambian authorities last week.
While Aswat was never charged in conjunction with the July 7 terror attacks, U.S. authorities extradited him from the U.K. in conjunction with setting up a terrorist training camp in Oregon back in 1999.
After multiple legal delays, including Aswat being institutionalized for paranoid schizophrenia, he was extradited to the U.S. in 2014. In March 2015, Aswat pled guilty to setting up the training camp, and he was sentenced to 20 years in prison in October of that same year.
In 2022, Aswat was returned to the U.K. and detained in a hospital.
Now, Aswat is being released by British authorities, despite warnings from British police that he still poses a "significant risk" to safety:
Haroon Aswat, 50, who was a close associate of the hate preacher Abu Hamza, is to leave the secure psychiatric facility where he has been held and move to Batley in West Yorkshire.
It is understood that Aswat’s mental health treatment has hindered a comprehensive assessment of his danger to the public, and the authorities were unable to fully evaluate his fitness for release.
Aswat, who plotted with Hamza to establish a terrorist training camp in Oregon, was sentenced to 20 years in jail in the United States in 2015. He has spent the past two years in a psychiatric hospital in the UK.
High Court Judge Mr. Justice Jay said Aswat's treatment "had been effective" and that Aswat would return to his family home in Yorkshire. But he also noted that "no formal terrorist risk assessment has been carried out since the defendant’s return" to the U.K..
Peter Clarke, a former counterterrorism chief with the Metropolitan Police warned that "there have been far too many tragic cases in the UK where terrorists have been released and gone on to murder" while Chris Philip, the shadow Home Secretary, warned that Aswat "could still be a real danger" to British citizens.
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