Abdurahman, Ismail

Ismail Abdurahman was convicted in February 2008 of assisting an offender and failing to disclose information about acts of terrorism.

The charges related to the attack on the London underground on 21 July 2005 in which three devices were detonated but each failed to explode.

Four men, Hussein Osman, Muktar Ibrahim, Yassin Omar and Ramzi Mohamed were all convicted of conspiracy to murder and sentenced to life Imprisonment with a recommended minimum term to be served of 40 years.

At a separate trial at Kingston Crown Court, Mr Abdurahman was prosecuted as one of a group of people said to have given active assistance to the bombers.

Mr Abdurahman pleaded not guilty but was convicted and sentenced to a total of ten years’ imprisonment. He appealed and his sentence was reduced to eight years, but his appeal against conviction was dismissed.

Mr Abdurahman applied unsuccessfully to the CCRC in 2009. He applied again in February 2017 having received in September 2016 a judgment of the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in which the Court found that his Article 6 rights (the right to a fair trial) were breached by the way in which he was dealt with by the police when interviewed as a witness.

Having conducted a detailed review of the case, the CCRC decided to refer the case to the Court of Appeal because it considered there was a real possibility that the Court would quash the conviction.

The referral was based on new evidence in the form of the judgment of Grand Chamber of the ECtHR which concluded that Mr Abdurahman’s trial was “irretrievably prejudiced”.

The CCRC referred the conviction in February 2019.

The Court of Appeal upheld the conviction in December 2019.