Lovers who met on Muslim dating website plotted to make bombs for terror attacks

Two lovers who met on a Muslim dating site plotted to make a bomb in order to carry out a terror attack, a court heard

Munir Hassan Mohammed and Rowaida El-Hassan attempted to build a homemade explosive device after the pair met on SingleMuslim.com, the Old Bailey was told today (30 October).

Prosecutors said Mohammed had previously been radicalised by an Islamic State commander on Facebook who he told he was ready to do a "job in the UK".

But the court heard when the 36-year-old man from Willesden, north-west London, went on to join the Muslim dating site he was looking for a wife.

The prosecution argued that by the spring of 2016 he was in regular contact with El-Hassan, 33, from Derby, because they shared the same extreme beliefs and swapped beheading videos.

The pair, both of Sudanese origin, are accused of one count each of preparing a terrorist act between November 2015 and December 2016. Both deny the charges.

El-Hassan wrote in her profile for the site: "I am looking for a simple, very simple, honest and straightforward man who fears Allah before anything else," reported the Derby Telegraph.

El-Hassan has a Masters degree in pharmacy from University College London, and used her knowledge of chemicals to help Mohammed stockpile the ingredients needed for a bomb, the prosecution alleged.

Prosecutor Anne Whyte QC said: "They exchanged materials and views at the time, we say, Mohammed was planning to perform an attack of his own, motivated and inspired by what he had seen and heard on social media."

"She [El Hassan] assisted Mohammed by providing him with information about chemical components required for bomb making and how to source them and she assisted his online research about the manufacture of ricin using castor beans.

Whyte added: "Their communications with each other demonstrated an emotional attachment and a shared extremist ideology," the Evening Standard added.

Counter-terror police found bomb-making manuals and instructions to build ricin and mobile phone detonators when they raided Mohammed's Derby home on 12 December last year, the jury heard.

They also discovered 200ml of hydrogen peroxide and 500ml of hydrochloric acid - two components used in explosives.

A second counter terror team raided El-Hassan's London home, on the same day and found a 1 litre bottle of drain cleaner which contained Sulphuric acid at 91 per cent purity - another explosive component.

The court heard Mohammed had been radicalised after speaking to a Facebook contact called Abubakr Kurdi, a suspected IS commander who has lionised recent terrorist atrocities in Nice, Normandy and Orlando and called for further lone wolf attacks throughout the world.

Whyte added: "In his communications with Kurdi, Munir Mohammed pledged his obedience to Kurdi and therefore by implication to IS.

"He requested, using basic code, the receipt of bomb making instructions and had expressed willingness to participate in 'a new job in the UK' - in other words, in an act of terrorism involving extreme violence."

The trial continues.