An Iraqi teenager has been found guilty of attempted murder after planting a homemade bomb on a crowded rush-hour London underground train.
Ahmed Hassan, an asylum seeker, was convicted after a device he built partially detonated at Parsons Green in west London in September last year.
Thirty people were injured after a fireball swept through the carriage, burning passengers’ skin, hair and clothing.
Survivors spoke of feeling their faces being both burned and lacerated by flying glass at the same time.
The judge, Mr Justice Haddon-Cave, said Hassan was convicted on “overwhelming evidence”. There was no reaction from Hassan, who sat in court with his head bowed.
He was remanded in custody to be sentenced on a date to be fixed next week.
Hassan, 18, of Sunbury-on-Thames, Surrey, admitted making the bomb by mixing a powerful but unstable explosive using hydrogen peroxide. He also made an initiator using a kitchen timer.
But he had denied attempted murder.
He told the Old Bailey that he had made the bomb because he was “very bored, very depressed, very confused” and wanted to draw attention to himself.
The jury heard that both of Hassan’s parents were dead by the time he was six, and that he blamed Britain for his father’s death in an air raid on Baghdad. He had also complained about the ongoing airstrikes against his country.
He denied that he was motivated by hatred or revenge, however.
The London court heard that Hassan had told Home Office immigration officials that he had been abducted by Islamic State in Iraq, and had spent three months “being trained how to kill”.
He had then made his way to Britain via Istanbul, Paris and Calais, entering the country in October 2015 as a 16-year-old stowaway in the back of a lorry.
Hassan told the court that in fact he had had no contact with Islamic State, and had fabricated this account in an attempt to win sympathy and secure leave to remain in the UK.
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