Erol Incedal found guilty at secret Old Bailey terror trial six days ago, but judge’s order prevented reporting of verdict until now

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

A man accused of plotting terrorist attacks in London has been convicted of possession of a bomb-making manual.

Erol Incedal was found guilty six days ago, but an order imposed by the judge in the case prohibited any reporting of the verdict before Monday.

Incedal, 26, will face a retrial next year accused of preparing acts of terrorism, after the jury failed to reach a verdict on that charge. His four-week trial at the Old Bailey in London was surrounded by unusual secrecy, with the public and press excluded from two-thirds of the hearing.

A small group of journalists was permitted to witness some of the evidence. But they have been prohibited from reporting what they heard and police have taken away their notebooks.

On Monday, the trial judge, Mr Justice Nicol, lifted an order imposed under the Contempt of Court Act that had prohibited disclosure of Incedal’s conviction, after ruling that the jury at his retrial would be permitted to know of it.

Incedal, a law student from south London, was found to have the five-page bomb-making manual and other documents concerned with explosives after armed police forced his Mercedes to stop in central London in October last year.

After he was arrested, officers discovered an SD memory card wrapped in masking tape inside the cover of his iPhone. The manual was found on the card, inside a file entitled Good Stuff.

Incedal had told his trial that he believed he had a reasonable excuse for possession of the documents.

A second man, Mounir Rarmoul-Bouhadjar, also 26 and from south London – who was arrested at the same time as Incedal – was found to be in possession of identical documents on an identical memory card.

Last month, he admitted possessing a document, on or before 13 October last year, that was “likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism”, and would be sentenced after Incedal’s retrial.

The extensive secrecy and the unprecedented arrangements for reporting Incedal’s trial were ordered by the court of appeal after media organisations challenged proposals to hear the entire case in secret, with Incedal and Rarmoul-Bouhadjar anonymised as AB and CD.

Last week, the lord chief justice of England and Wales, Lord Thomas, said there must never again be attempts to anonymise defendants, adding: “Justice that is not open is not good justice.”

The reasons for the continuing secrecy cannot 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”.

Lawyers representing the media are continuing to challenge the secrecy surrounding the case.