The Home Office and police were yesterday accused of ‘fundamental failings’ over the Parsons Green terror attack last year in which more than 50 people were injured.
Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee accused the Government and security services of a multitude of errors in the case of Ahmed Hassan, 18, who carried out the Parsons Green bombing on the district line train last September.
The report stated that not enough was learnt from the London 7/7 bombings in 2005 or the murder of Lee Rigby in Woolwich in 2013, including several issues over improvements in intelligence sharing.
The committee investigated the Parsons Green incident as part of an inquiry into the 2017 terror attacks, which included those at Westminster, London Bridge and Finsbury Park.
Committee chairman Dominic Grieve said that despite multiple requests, the Home Office failed to provide full evidence in sufficient time for it to be included in the inquiry.
Mr Grieve said: “This is unacceptable. From what we have seen to date, there were fundamental failings in the handling of this case by the Home Office, the police and Surrey County Council.
“This litany of errors will require a separate comprehensive review, to which the Home Office must be directly answerable.”
Mr Grieve also said that Hassan should have been looked at as a ‘security risk’ given what was known about his background and his behavior.
Hassan left the device, equipped with a timer, on a westbound District line train from Wimbledon when it partially exploded at 8.20am and left 23 people with burns and 28 with crush injuries.
Hassan, who had arrived in the UK illegally in 2015 as a child asylum seeker from Iraq, told immigration officials that he had been groomed by Islamic State.
He was referred to the Government’s deradicalisation programme but still carried out the attack after building a bomb at his foster parent’s home in Sunbury-on-Thames, Surrey.
The same committee was also critical of the security services over the Manchester Arena suicide bombing by British-born Salman Abedi, 22, in May last year which killed 22 people and injured 116.
