One of the most dangerous terrorists in the UK was deported to Pakistan after being sentenced to life in prison for his involvement in a bombing plot targeting the Bluewater retail centre. The 23-year-old Jawad Akbar planned to detonate a radioactive “dirty” bomb, attack the Ministry of Sound nightclub in London, and blow up the Bluewater retail centre in Kent.
In addition to causing enormous damage, the 2004 strikes had the potential to kill hundreds of innocent people. In April 2007, Akbar, a resident of Crawley, West Sussex, was convicted guilty of conspiring to cause explosives and given a life sentence. He was sentenced to at least 17 and a half years in prison. The Parole Board declared him too dangerous to be freed in July 2022. The UK’s inability to guarantee that Akbar would be properly monitored in the event of his deportation was one of the primary factors.
Akbar should have been eligible for a second parole hearing in 2023 since his minimum prison sentence concluded in September 2021. The deportation of Akbar, aged 41, was verified by the Home Office. A joint returns agreement’ arrangement agreed by Pakistan and the Conservative government in 2019 is said to have enabled this. The law will be used to repatriate foreign criminals and immigration offenders from the United Kingdom to Pakistan, according to Priti Patel, the Home Secretary at the time.
“I don’t regret removing dangerous foreign criminals and immigration offenders who have no right to stay in the UK,” she stated at the time. We are unable to repeal our rules because the British public, very properly, has had enough of individuals exploiting them and playing the system. The Home Office failed to provide any details about the reasons the convicted terrorist was permitted to return to his birthplace of Pakistan and declined to comment on specific instances.
“Any foreign national who is convicted of a crime and given a prison sentence is considered for deportation at the earliest opportunity,” a Home Office official said in a statement. At first, the Home Office attempted to deport him to Italy, where his father is a citizen. It is thought that after leaving Pakistan, the family initially relocated to Italy. Akbar was a member of a five-person Pakistani gang of British ancestry that was associated with Al-Qaeda in Pakistan.
The other defendants in the 2006 trial were Waheed Mahmood, 35; Omar Khyam, 25; Anthony Garcia, 24; and Salahuddin Amin, 32. Each of the five received a life sentence. It was discovered during the trial that the gang was prepared to assault the mall using a huge device that cost about £100 and contained aluminium powder and ammonium nitrate. Inspired by Oklahoma City bomber Tim McVeigh, who used a nearly identical device to murder 168 people in 1995, the homemade bomb was constructed using common household items.
“All of you were determined to cause indiscriminate death, injury, and suffering of unsuspecting and innocent members of the community,” remarked Judge Sir Michael Astill QC at the time. Discussions over potential locations for improvised devices, including the Ministry of Sound and the Bluewater shopping complex, served as an example of this.
“These are instances of locations where a large number of people gathered and were therefore susceptible targets.” They show the extent of the carnage you were willing to cause and would have caused had it not been for the police and security agencies’ involvement. In 2024, Anthony Garcia and Waheed Mahmood were released on parole. In February 2024, Salahuddin Amin’s parole bid was denied.
