Erol Incedal found not guilty of preparation of acts of terrorism after a retrial in which large parts of evidence were heard inside a locked courtroom

A man who faced accusations that he was plotting to mount an Islamic State-inspired gun or bomb attack on the streets of London has been acquitted after a highly secretive Old Bailey trial.



Erol Incedal, 27, was cleared of preparation of acts of terrorism after a four-week retrial in which large parts of the evidence were heard inside a locked courtroom.

Incedal broke down and wept as the jury returned a majority verdict after 27 hours of deliberation.

Last year Incedal, a law student from south London, was convicted of possession of a five-page bomb-making manual on a memory card, but faced the retrial because the original jury had been unable to agree a verdict on the more serious charge of plotting a terrorist attack.

He will be sentenced for the earlier verdict next Wednesday along with his friend Mounir Rarmoul-Bouhadjar, also 27 and from south London, who admitted possession of the manual at an earlier hearing.

The juries at each trial heard that a listening device was placed inside Incedal’s Mercedes after he was stopped while speeding in west London in September 2013. He was subsequently recorded as he discussed plans to buy a gun.

He told the court he wanted to buy a gun because he planned to deal in drugs and believed he needed to protect himself. He also said that that although he had been carrying a memory card with the bomb-making manual stored on it at the time of his arrest, he believed he had a “reasonable excuse” for having it in his possession.

However, such is the secrecy surrounding the case that it is not currently possible to report on the basis for that belief. Nor is it possible to report on other significant parts of the evidence that Incedal put forward in his defence.

Nonetheless, the jury, who did hear all the evidence, was clearly not satisfied that the prosecution had made out its case beyond reasonable doubt, and acquitted Incedal of the charge.

A small number of journalists were permitted to attend some of the sessions held in secret, but they have been warned they will be committing an offence if they disclose what they heard, unless the trial judge, Sir Andrew Nicol, lifts the extensive reporting restrictions.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Court artist sketch of Erol Incedal appearing at the Old Bailey, London, in October 2014. Illustration: Elizabeth Cook/PA

It remains unclear whether Nicol will do so. Lawyers representing the media may appeal against any refusal.

The unprecedented arrangements were ordered by the court of appeal after media organisations mounted a legal challenge against proposals to have the entire trial heard in secret, with Incedal anonymised as “AB”.

The appeal court ruled that up to 10 journalists should be permitted to attend “the bulk” of the trial, but some sessions were heard in complete secrecy.

The reasons for the secrecy cannot currently be reported. However, the appeal court’s judgment, a public document, noted that national security was “the raison d’etre” of MI5 and MI6, and that “from time to time, tensions between the open justice principle and national security will be inevitable”.

The jury heard that Incedal had taken an interest in the group now known as Islamic State. When police stopped him in Ealing, west London, in September 2013, and searched his E-Class Mercedes, a piece of paper bearing the address of the London home of Tony and Cherie Blair was found inside his Versace glasses case.

Over the next two hours, while he was being held at a police station in west London and questioned about a number of motoring offences, a listening device was wired into the vehicle, and an investigation codenamed Operation Vendible was launched.

Over the next 13 days, the device captured all the conversations Incedal had in the car with his wife, his brother-in-law and two friends. Key conversations were used in evidence against him.

Eight days after it was installed, Incedal was recorded discussing plans to purchase a firearm. He told Rarmoul-Bouhadjar to keep in touch when purchasing the weapon: “Update me at every stage and just say the sausage is nice, erm, there’s enough sauce in it.” Rarmoul-Bouhadjar asked: “What’s the sausage?” Incedal replied: “Bullets. If there’s not enough sauce in it, you’ll have to make that decision if we’re going to take it or not.”

In the event, Incedal said, he had not purchased either a firearm or any drugs.

Thirteen days after the listening device was installed, Incedal and Rarmoul-Bouhadjar were travelling in the Mercedes when armed police forced the car to a halt near Tower Bridge in London and shot out the tyres to prevent any escape.

The two men were arrested and were found to be in possession of almost identical SD memory cards wrapped in masking tape and concealed inside their iPhone cases. Stored on each of the cards were a number of documents concerning explosives, including the five-page bomb-making manual.

Ministry of Defence forensic explosives experts dismissed some of those instructions as farcical. However, some gave accurate guidance for the production of a variety of viable explosive substances, and for the construction of a detonator using a number of easily acquired objects.

Rarmoul-Bouhadjar, an economics graduate, pleaded guilty last year to a charge under the Terrorism Act 2000 of possessing a document, on or before 13 October 2013, that was “likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism”. A second charge, of possessing a false passport, was withdrawn.

The court also heard an examination of Incedal’s Acer laptop revealed traces of emails and Skype messages between an account he had set up the previous July, using the name tom13, and a hotmail account named fatimahamoodieight.

The examination also showed that Incedal had been communicating with another person, thought to be in the Middle East, who was using an email account in the name of Zaynab Alawi.

Erol Incedal. Photograph: Facebook

The pair exchanged a number of messages referring to “straps” – slang for firearms. One exchange referred to “k 1122aaa shhh etc”, which the prosecution suggested was a code for Kalashnikovs, and “mo88m ssbayy style”, said to be a reference to an attack on a hotel, such as that carried out in Mumbai in November 2008.

The jury was able to consider Incedal’s explanation for these communicatons, but due to the secrecy surrounding the case, that explanation cannot be reported.

Incedal told the jury how he and his siblings had been born in Turkey to a father who was a Kurdish communist and a mother who was from a Turkoman background and an Alawite. His father had died when he was six weeks old, and a year later his mother moved the family to London. An older sister later died while fighting for the Kurdish separatist group the PKK.

A slightly built, bearded man, Incedal gave an account from the witness box of a troubled upbringing in the neighbourhood around Elephant and Castle in south-east London: being excluded from primary school, threatened with exclusion from secondary school and his conviction for attempted theft, an offence that he committed aged 12.

At 14, during Ramadan, he joined other Muslim boys who were allowed out of school to attend a local mosque. However, he and a friend would slip off and hang out in bookmakers’ shops and kebab restaurants. Eventually he agreed to go to the mosque with the other boys, but only because he “didn’t want them to grass us up”.

Before long, he said, he became involved with the global Islamic religious movement Tablighi Jamaat, which he said gave him the opportunity for “self-rectification” and a chance to learn more about Islam. He travelled widely with the group, to Greece, India, Bangladesh and New York.

He was married by the age of 17 to a girl the same age. While still young they had three children, and were living with relatives or in temporary accommodation.

In 2009, Incedal enrolled on a law and accountancy course at London South Bank University and received a student loan.

Despite his limited income, the jury has heard evidence that Incedal was enjoying a free-spending lifestyle. The listening device picked up evidence of him counting out £1,000, in order to purchase a firearm. In another recording, Incedal is heard to state: “Money – it’s easy. Yeah?”

As with so much about the case, other sources of Incedal’s money must, for the time being, remain a mystery: following his acquittal, the small group of reporters who have heard some of the secret evidence cannot disclose whether they have learned where it was coming from.