LONDON: Three convicted terrorists, including the brother of the Manchester Arena bomber, have been found guilty of attacking a prison officer in a London prison’s high-security unit.
Prison officer Paul Edwards, 57, said he thought he would be killed when the three men attacked him in May 2020.
Attackers Hashem Abedi, Ahmed Hassan and Muhammed Saeed all had been convicted for terror-related offenses.
Abedi, 24, conspired with his brother Salman Abedi in the deadly bombing of an Arianna Grande concert in Manchester in 2017, killing 22 — many of them children.
Iraqi national Hassan injured 30 people when a homemade bomb partially exploded on a London tube train. He is serving time in jail for the attempted murder of 93 people in 2018.
Saeed had planned online to commit violent acts of terrorism.
Abedi, thought to be the ringleader of the attack on Edwards, was handed an additional three years and 10 months behind bars, while the other two men were given three each.
Abedi is already due to serve more than three decades behind bars for his role in the Manchester attack.
He was suspected of being the leader of a group of Islamist terrorist inmates inside Belmarsh’s “prison within a prison,” Woolwich Crown Court heard.
“I feared for my life, and I genuinely thought if I hadn’t fought back I would’ve ended up with at least extreme injuries or dead,” Edwards told the court.
During the trial, Abedi said: “I don’t think the sentence is going to make any difference.
“Inshallah (God willing), myself and all my brothers will be leaving the prison very soon.”
Judge Bobbie Cheema-Grubb told him: “Mr. Abedi, you have ahead of you many decades in custody.
“You say the sentence I pass will make no difference, and perhaps in your mind it will make no difference. But it is important that the law is applied and that each and every prisoner knows that if there is an attack on prison officers, they will be brought to justice.”
