Terror suspect held over ricin plot can make asylum claim

A special immigration hearing ruled Moloud Sihali could not be kicked out on national security grounds. The Algerian could be granted asylum.

After losing yesterday's case the Home Office had to consider a claim for refugee status made by Sihali shortly after his 2003 arrest, said immigration sources.

Sihali served a 15-month jail term for having false passports.

He is likely to receive free housing and benefits while the outcome of his asylum claim is decided - despite the fact that he sneaked into Britain illegally as long ago as 1997, using a false passport.

The Special Immigration Appeal Commission heard evidence linking Sihali to international terror suspects, including Mohamed Meguerba.

He was first arrested in September 2002 and tried for allegedly being part of a terror cell which planned to use the poison ricin to murder dozens in London. Sihali and three fellow Algerians were cleared of the plot.

Their co-defendant, Kamel Bourgass, also Algerian, was convicted of killing Detective Constable Stephen Oake in a raid connected to the plot, and conspiracy to cause a public nuisance. He was jailed for life.

Following the July 7 attacks in 2005 the Home Office said they wanted Sihali out of the country to protect national security.

Home Secretary John Reid said Sihali had provided "active, if undiscriminating, assistance to terrorists in the past" and there is a "real risk" he will do so again.

But the SIAC panel, headed by Mr Justice Mitting, yesterday said there was an "absence of any evidence or intelligence that he has ever been a principled Islamic extremist". The 31-year-old sneaked into Britain in 1997 using a false Italian identification card, court papers revealed.

On arrival in London, he headed for the Finsbury Park Mosque, where he lived intermittently for two years.

The mosque was run for six years by the hook-handed cleric Abu Hamza and it has links to a string of terrorists.

In 1999 Sihali moved into a flat with David Khalef, who was also later cleared over the ricin plot.

In 2002, a third terror suspect - known only as K -moved into the flat. K introduced Sihali to Mohamed Meguerba, an Algerian claimed by the security services to be a key conspirator in the ricin plot.

Sihali received hundreds of pounds paid into an account held in a false name by a terror suspect, which was intended for Meguerba.

When he was arrested at an Internet cafe in September 2002 he was attempting to obtain a loan of up to £15,000 for K.

In yesterday's judgment, SIAC said that it was satisfied Sihali had "provided assistance for activities which, in fact, had a terrorist purpose and had lied about them".

But they said he was not a threat to national security.

Judges said yesterday he must be released from the strict bail conditions on which he had been held. The Home Secretary has ten days to appeal.

Natalia Garcia, Sihali's lawyer, said after the ruling that he is "an entirely innocent man who has had to endure years of imprisonment in Belmarsh in the harshest conditions as well as bail with stringent control-order type restrictions on his liberty, all on the basis of faulty intelligence and political spin".