Overview
- Aswat was discharged from Bethlem Royal Hospital at the weekend and is expected to move to Batley to live with family while the Home Office enforces a notification order and other legal restrictions.
- Police told the court that counterterrorism officers assess he still poses a national security risk and a pre-extradition psychiatrist recorded that he continued to express violent extremist views.
- He was convicted in the United States in 2015 for helping to set up a 1999 extremist training camp in Oregon linked to Abu Hamza and was deported to the UK in 2022 after serving part of his sentence.
- Clinicians have diagnosed him with schizoaffective disorder and record that he has relapsed when he stopped medication, a factor that courts weighed when setting treatment-linked release conditions.
- The case has reopened debate about how the justice, health and immigration systems manage terrorism-linked offenders in the community and what powers the police and Home Office can use if restrictions are breached.