Shadow Justice Secretary Nick Timothy and the Henry Jackson Society have written to David Lammy demanding urgent answers over the release of al-Qaeda-linked terrorist associate Haroon Aswat from secure psychiatric detention. Aswat, 50, was discharged from Bethlem Royal Hospital in Bromley after completing treatment for schizoaffective disorder…
Timothy and the HJS say he has longstanding Islamist extremist links, including connections to al-Qaeda activity and the 7/7 London bombings, which killed 52 people. Police traced 20 calls made by the 7/7 suicide bombers, in the hours before their attacks, to a phone linked to him…
He was convicted in the US in 2015 for conspiring with Abu Hamza to set up a terrorist training camp in Oregon, sentenced to 20 years (later reduced), and deported to Britain in 2022. He was released despite counter-terrorism police assessing he still posed a national security risk, and despite a psychiatrist noting that “even when in a relatively stable mental state [Aswat] has continued to express violent extremist Islamic ideology.” Because his release fell under mental health law rather than the standard terrorist-offender framework, he did not undergo a full counter-terrorism risk assessment…
Timothy says the case shows safeguards flagged six years ago by Jonathan Hall KC in his 2020 Independent Review of MAPPA for Terrorist Risk Offenders may still be unfit for purpose. Lammy has been asked to clarify four things:
The case raises questions about whether the system can handle terrorist offenders whose cases fall between mental health and national security. Jonathan Hall raised these concerns years ago…
Read the full letter below:
Statement by Paul Dacre, Editor-in-Chief of Associated Newspapers Limited, following Harry’s loss in court today:
“Prince Harry wrote a sad book which boasted about his killing of 25 Taliban, his drug-taking and, in cringe-making detail, how he lost his virginity. There isn’t a laundry in the cosmos big enough to wash all the dirty linen he has aired about his own family. For him, to complain about HIS privacy being invaded takes, not just the biscuit, but the whole tin. Poor Harry. I feel sorry for the way a confused and angry young man has been drawn into this case. The bitter irony is that his mother, Diana, liked the Mail. We were her paper. We took her side in her acrimonious break up with Charles. She and I would speak and meet. The Mail’s superb royal reporter was her friend and confidante. The truth is that this trumped-up action – which has cost well over £50 million and wasted a huge amount of valuable court time – should never have been brought to trial. That it did, raises profoundly disturbing questions about the conduct of elements of the legal profession. Today’s verdict is not just a victory for Associated’s magnificent journalists – several of whom have had a terrible toll imposed on their health and lives – but a free press generally. Make no mistake. This was a conspiracy, supported by Hacked Off, to destroy a paper. Financed by the orgy-loving, racist Max Mosley and involving the actor Hugh Grant, it was also a sinister bid to resuscitate Leveson Two and impose statutory regulation on the press which, even now, is rearing its ugly head in Labour’s Media Green Paper.”