The European Court of Human Rights has dismissed the complaint of four attempted suicide bombers who said police denied them the right of access to a lawyer.
The four men were arrested after bombs were detonated on the London transport system on the 21st July 2005, only two weeks after the terrorist attacks which killed 52 people and injured countless more.
Messrs Ibrahim, Mohammed, Omar and Adburahman were found guilty of criminal offences after a thorough police investigation and sentenced to forty years in prison.
But they tried to duck justice by saying their Human Rights had been breached when they say they were denied their right to legal assistance during the investigation.
The case concerned the temporary delay in providing the men with access to a lawyer after their arrests and the use of statements made in interviews without lawyers in the trial in which they were convicted.
The men tried to argue that none of the statements should have been used because they were denied legal assistance even though, in the case of Ismail Abdurahman, a British national born in Somalia in 1982, he continued to rely on self-incriminating statements he had made up until the trial where he requested that it be excluded.
Despite following every route to escape his sentence, Abdurahman did not retract the statements made during his police interview even after he had consulted lawyers.
The reason the men were temporarily refused legal assistance is so police could conduct urgent interviews ‘for the purpose of protecting life and preventing serious damage to property’.
Under the Terrorism Act 2000, such interviews can take place in the absence of a solicitor and before the detainee has had the opportunity to seek legal advice. During the interviews the applicants denied any involvement in or knowledge of the events of 21 July. But later, at their trial, they acknowledged their involvement in the events but claimed that the bombs had been a hoax and were never intended to explode. The statements made at their ‘safety interviews’ were admitted at trial.
The judges in Strasbourg said they were ‘satisfied’ that the police interviews took place because there was an ‘exceptionally serious and imminent threat to public safety’ in the possibility of further attacks.
The court also found that no undue prejudice had been caused to the applicants’ right to a fair trial by the admission at their trials of the statements they had made during police interviews and before they had been given access to legal assistance.
Despite making these claims regarding their human rights, none of the men alleged they were coerced into making any statements about their involvement in the events of 21 July 2005. In fact, at the trial the men were even allowed to challenge the use of their statements.
Fundamentally, the court ruled the safety interview statements were ‘far from being the only incriminating evidence against the applicants’.
A Home Office spokesperson told Breitbart London,
“These individuals planned to bring terror to the streets of London just two weeks after 52 people were killed during the July 7 bombings. Had their plot been successful, it would have had devastating consequences.”
“We will not apologise for the fact our priority will always be to detect, disrupt and prosecute would-be terrorists.”
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