Secret terror trial: two men jailed over bomb-making manual
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Version 0 of 1. One of the most secretive trials held in Britain since the second world war has ended with two men being jailed for possession of bomb-making manuals. Erol Incedal was jailed for 42 months for possession of a document likely to be useful to a person preparing an act of terrorism, while Mounir Rarmoul-Bouhadjar, who had pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing, was sentenced to three years. Incedal had also been accused of plotting a terrorist attack on the streets of London, but was acquitted last weekat a retrial. Both his first trial last year – which ended with the jury failing to reach a verdict on the charge of plotting an attack, and his retrial, when he was cleared on a majority verdict – were shrouded in such secrecy that the matters at the heart of the case cannot be reported. Before sentencing the two men at the Old Bailey in London on Wednesday, Mr Justice Nicol rejected an application from 11 media organisations for the reporting restrictions to be lifted. Anthony Hudson QC, counsel for the media, had argued that there was a “legitimate and substantial public interest” in the public being permitted to learn why Incedal had been acquitted. In rejecting the application, Nicol handed down two judgments - one open, and one secret. His open judgment said that crown prosecutors could be dissuaded from bringing such a case in the future if reporting restrictions were varied, and concluded: “For reasons which I can only explain in the accompanying private judgment, I reject Mr Hudson’s application.” Sentencing the two men, he said that some of the methods of bomb construction contained in the manual were viable. “The potential for such bombs to cause death, injury and destruction is obvious.” At each of Incedal’s trials, the evidence was carefully presented in one of three sessions. Parts of the case were in open court, with the press and the public free to come and go; other parts were held behind locked doors, before a jury whose members were warned that they could go to jail if they divulged what they had heard; and parts were held in intermediate sessions, in the presence of the jury and a small group of journalists who are prohibited from reporting what they learned. These unique arrangements were imposed on the trial by the court of appeal after the media challenged proposals to have the entire case heard in secret, with Incedal and Rarmoul-Bouhadjar anonymised as AB and CD. The appeal court said that the prohibition on reporting the evidence from the intermediate sessions should be reviewed at the end of the case, but the judge has now said it should remain in place. The media organisations are considering whether to appeal. As a consequence of the decision not to lift the reporting restrictions, the public is not only unaware of matters that lay at the heart of the case against Incedal; they do not know why these matters are being hidden, or by whom. Incedal, 27, a law student from south London, and his lifelong friend Rarmoul-Bouhadjar, an economics graduate who is also 27 and from south London, were arrested in October 2013 by armed police who brought their Mercedes to a halt near London’s Tower Bridge and shot out the tyres to prevent any escape. Both men were found to have the bomb-making manuals and a number of other documents, including a car-bomb recognition guide, on micro SD memory cards that were hidden inside their iPhone cases. As well as being charged with possession of the manual, Incedal was charged with preparing acts of terrorism between February 2012 and October 2013. Incedal told the jury at both trials that he had a “reasonable excuse” for possessing the manual. Because of the secrecy surrounding the case, this reason cannot be made public. While the jury at the first trial rejected this defence, and convicted Incedal of committing a criminal offence through his possession of the manual, the jury at the retrial were told that this did not necessarily mean he was a terrorist. After hearing Incedal’s defence – which cannot be reported – the jury concluded that the prosecution had not proved that he was a terrorist. A listening device that had been installed in the car 13 days before the arrests heard the two men discussing plans to buy a gun, and talking about a trip to Syria. Incedal told the jury in open court that he had travelled to Turkey, but denied having crossed the border into Syria. |