Pair of convicted terrorists charged with UK prison assault

The brother of the 2017 Manchester suicide bomber, and an Iraqi asylum seeker behind a botched London Underground train bombing, have been charged with assaulting a prison officer, police said Wednesday.

Hashem Abedi, 23, whose brother Salman killed 22 people in the Manchester concert bombing, and Ahmed Hassan, 21, who injured 30 people in his rush-hour attack in the capital later the same year, were charged over a May 2020 incident at Belmarsh high-security prison.

Abedi, who was last year jailed for life for playing an “integral part” in the attack at an Ariana Grande concert, also faces charges for assaulting a second prison officer at the jail in southeast London.

Prosecutors also charged a third man, Muhammed Saeed, 22, with assault for his alleged involvement in the prison attack.

The trio will appear at a London magistrates’ court on April 7.

Abedi was convicted of murder, attempted murder and conspiring to cause explosions at a trial that ended in March last year, after one of the worst terror attacks on British soil.

The Daesh group-inspired suicide bombing committed by Salman Abedi happened among crowds of mostly young people leaving the concert at the Manchester Arena.

The youngest victim was aged just eight. Others included parents who had come to pick up their children.

Hassan was found guilty in March 2018 of attempted murder over the botched bombing at Parsons Green underground station in southwest London the previous September.

He left the improvised bucket bomb filled with screwdrivers, knives, nuts, bolts and TATP explosives in a carriage carrying 93 passengers but it only partially exploded.

Hassan, who arrived in Britain in October 2015, had alighted from the train at the previous stop.