Terror plot ringleader’s brother disciplined by TfL for getting a free travel pass for suspected extremist
Mo Ali, whose brother was jailed for life in 2009 for a liquid bomb plot, was a customer services assistant on London Underground
A TERROR ringleader’s brother worked on the London Underground and was disciplined after getting a free travel pass for a suspected extremist.
Mo Ali, whose brother Abdulla Ahmed Ali was jailed for life in 2009 for a liquid bomb plot on planes, was a customer services assistant.
He had the same Tube job as London Bridge attacker Khuram Butt.
Mo obtained the family and pals perk in 2015 for a man on a terror control order curbing travel.
Cops found it among a stash of Tube travel cards at the suspect’s flat.
There is no suggestion Mo, of East London, sympathised with the jet plot and it is unclear if he knew of the order.
A Tube source said he quit the King’s Cross St Pancras job before a disciplinary process finished.
The source said: “It is shocking enough that a guy whose brother planned to kill hundreds of people in a bomb plot is working at a busy tube station.
“But when he got the pass for someone on a terror order everyone was astonished.
“People knew who he was and what had happened with his brother.
“But Mo did not appear to be an extremist at all.
“However when anti-terror police alerted management to who had received a nominee pass, they had to act.
“The whole disciplinary procedure dragged on for months and months though, and Mo had a staff rep with him in hearings.
“He then quit the job before the disciplinary was over so was never sacked over it.
“Amazingly six months after he’d resigned, Mo then re-applied for a job.
“He got all the way to the ‘role play’ stage of the interview before bosses realised who he was and blocked the application.”
There was anger this week as a picture of London Bridge ringleader Butt in a fluorescent TFL jacket, making a hand-sign next to tube tracks emerged.
It was taken in May 2016 – four months after he had appeared in the Channel 4 programme The Jihadis Next Door. Butt was investigated by M15 in 2015, but dropped down the radar of security services as they did not believe he was planning an imminent attack.
There was controversy over the nominee pass benefit in 2015 when it emerged TFL staff had given £22 million of free travel to relatives and friends in a year.
A TfL spokesman said: “All potential recruits for jobs at TfL undergo criminal record background checks and we take up to three years of references from former employers. TfL does not, of course, have access to any watchlists maintained by the UK authorities.”