Iraqi asylum seeker guilty of London Tube bombing

An 18-year-old Iraqi asylum seeker was on Friday found guilty of attempted murder over the botched bombing of a rush-hour London Underground train that injured 30 people.

Ahmed Hassan constructed his homemade bomb "with the aim of indiscriminately killing as many people as possible," said Sue Hemming from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) after the jury at London's Old Bailey delivered their verdict.

Hassan left the improvised bucket bomb filled with screwdrivers, knives, nuts, bolts and "Mother of Satan" TATP explosives in a carriage carrying 93 passengers on September 15, last year.

It partially exploded at Parsons Green tube station in west London, one stop after he had alighted.

Dean Haydon, head of Scotland Yard's Counter Terrorism Command, called Hassan "an intelligent and articulate individual that is devious and cunning in equal measures.

"He kept secret what he was planning and plotting. We describe him as a lone actor."
"I was thrown to the ground," he said. "The flames were overwhelming... It was intense heat, I thought I had lost my ears, I thought my head was on fire."
"I was watching documentaries as well, about fugitives and just the idea of being a fugitive got into my head."