A man who plotted to set up an extremist training camp will be allowed to move home after his release from prison – despite experts concluding he “remains a risk to national security”.
Haroon Aswat, from Batley, West Yorkshire, was jailed for 20 years in 2015 after he admitted conspiring to set up the camp in the US state of Oregon.
Having served his sentence in the US, the 50-year-old was deported to the UK in 2022 and detained under the Mental Health Act, although a court heard his release was “expected in the relatively near future” after effective treatment.
A judge approved a notification order for Aswat, meaning authorities should be kept up to date with details such as his address.
The hearing at the High Court on 1 April was told Aswat, who is currently being held at Bethlem Royal Hospital, is expected to return to his family in Yorkshire.
He did not serve the entirety of his 20-year sentence because periods of detention in the UK while awaiting extradition were taken into account.
The United States government said the purpose of the training camp was “to train young impressionable men in America to fight and kill so that so they could travel to Afghanistan to join forces with al Qaeda”.
Aswat had been working under the direction of radical Muslim cleric Abu Hamza to set up the camp.
He has been diagnosed with a mental health condition called schizoaffective disorder, although in 2022 a psychiatrist concluded there was no evidence of him having the condition when the offences took place in or around November 1999.
The psychiatrist said Aswat openly endorsed “extremist ideology” and had told him in an interview: “I am a terrorist.”
He wrote in a report ahead of his extradition: “Even when in a relatively stable mental state [Aswat] has continued to express violent extremists Islamic ideology.”
According to the psychiatrist, Aswat was “highly ambivalent about the need for medication and had relapsed twice as a result of stopping treatment”, which had coincided with violent outbursts.
His report concluded “there remains the risk of Islamic violent extremism”.
The High Court hearing was told Aswat has also been assessed by several police officers in the UK, who concluded he “remains a risk to national security”.
Sir Robert Jay, who chaired the hearing, said Aswat did not oppose the notification order being made.
According to a Home Office spokesperson, notification orders “allows the police and other authorities to monitor an offender and to manage any ongoing risk they pose”.
The spokesperson added: “Protecting the British public is the very first priority of this government, and national security assessments are always carried out on individuals who may pose a risk to the public.
“We have some of the most robust counter-terrorism risk management measures in the world, including a variety of powers for the police and intelligence services to monitor and manage the risk posed by terrorist offenders and individuals of terrorist concern.”
