A High Court judge sparked anger after telling convicted extremist Haroon Aswat “all the best” as the 50-year-old prepares to leave a psychiatric hospital and return to live with family in West Yorkshire, despite warnings from counterterrorism police about the risk he may still pose.
Sir Robert Jay made the comments during a hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice that marked Aswat’s first public appearance since his deportation to Britain in 2022 following a US conviction for terrorism offences. A court transcript of the hearing published by media outlets shows the judge saying, "I have to wish you all the best and say to you that the way forward is to keep on your medication, listen to the advice you are going to get, and keep out of the sort of things you were doing. Because you saw where it ended up and you do not want to go back to that, I am sure." The remarks provoked immediate criticism from victims' groups and some politicians.
Aswat is currently held at Bethlem Royal Hospital in South London and has completed the sentence imposed after he pleaded guilty to terrorism offences in the United States in 2015. UK authorities say a legal restriction on monitoring psychiatric patients means he could be released without GPS tagging or an ankle monitor, a situation that has alarmed senior officers in the Metropolitan Police's Counter Terrorism Command. High Court documents show probation officials declined to carry out a risk assessment because rules prevent checks on patients detained under health legislation.
Detective Chief Superintendent Gareth Rees told the court that Aswat had "spoken positively of his time with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and expressed aspirations to reconnect with them," describing that conduct as giving him "grave concerns about the risk which the defendant poses to the UK's national security and to the public." The Crown and security services have previously warned that civil powers to restrict movement or impose monitoring are limited when a former prisoner is detained under mental health provisions rather than serving an active custodial sentence.
British government sources confirmed Aswat had completed his custodial term and was under psychiatric care but declined to give a release date. One source said he would be subject to "robust monitoring" for 30 years. A government spokeswoman said: "If any individual poses a threat to national security the police and intelligence services have a range of powers they can apply. We will always do whatever is necessary inside the law to protect the public from any risk posed by former terrorist offenders or people of terrorist concern."
Aswat, who trained in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, has long been linked by investigators to Islamist terrorism. He helped radical cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri establish a training camp in Oregon in 1999, and US investigators found his name among documents recovered from a Pakistani safehouse connected to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the principal planner of the 9/11 attacks. Although he was never charged in Britain over the July 7, 2005 suicide bombings in London that killed 52 people and injured more than 770, police linked 20 calls made by the bombers to a phone connected to Aswat. He was later arrested in Zambia carrying a suspected terror manual and suspected bomb-making materials.
Aswat fought extradition from the United Kingdom for nearly a decade on grounds related to his mental health before being sent to the United States in 2014. He pleaded guilty in 2015 and was sentenced to 20 years, a term later reduced to seven years to reflect time served in UK custody. While in US custody, court papers say he made admissions about his involvement in terrorism and at times described himself as unrepentant; US authorities strongly opposed his early release.
The judge's benevolent remarks and the legal limits on surveillance of psychiatric patients have prompted calls for review of how former terror convicts are managed when they are transferred from criminal custody into health care settings. Victims’ campaigners said the decision to allow Aswat to return to live with family without electronic monitoring, if implemented, would cause distress to survivors and relatives of those killed in the 2005 attacks.
Officials declined to confirm whether police would seek to apply any alternative restrictions under terrorism-prevention legislation or civil orders. The controversy is likely to prompt further scrutiny of the intersection between mental health law and national security powers as Aswat's transition from hospital care to community living draws near.