A TERRORIST convicted as part of a plot to blow up Bluewater shopping centre is seeking to be freed by human rights judges.
Dual British and Pakistani citizen Salajuddin Amin, 37, claims the United Kingdom was complicit in torture and was denied the right to a fair trial, and has taken his case to the European Court of Human Rights.
Amin is currently serving a life sentence after being found guilty with four others of conspiracy to cause explosions likely to endanger life or injure property in a year-long trial at the Old Bailey in 2007.
The plot involved letting off a fertiliser bomb at potential targets including Bluewater shopping centre in Greenhithe.
Amin surrendered to authorities in Pakistan on April 3, 2004, four days after the arrest of six men in the UK.
He was held by security forces for 10 months where he claims he was beaten, threatened and abused.
There was no suggestion that he was tortured by British agents but Amin claims they were “complicit”.
In Pakistan, Amin admitted involvement in a terrorist conspiracy but in February was allowed to fly back to the UK.
He was arrested on arrival and, with his solicitor present, made further confessions that he was an agent for British men coming to Pakistan to finance or train for Jihadist activity, that he attended explosives training with one of the six arrested men and that he gave information on how to create fertiliser bombs.
His earlier confessions were never referred to by the police.
However, in the documents provided to the European court, Amin claims they were “false admissions, which adopted part of the previous false admissions extracted from him during his detention in Pakistan”.
Before the trial, Amin’s defence argued that the evidence should not be allowed and also argued for all information about his detention in Pakistan should be handed over. A judge ruled against him.
The court papers revealed: “As the confessions made in the United Kingdom were neither directly or indirectly the product of any abuse, the judge did not consider that it would be unfair to admit them in evidence.”
The judge also failed to accept that Amin’s abuse was as serious as alleged.
An appeal against his conviction was rejected in 2008.
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