Two men who plotted mass attack on Jewish community in Manchester jailed for life

Walid Saadaoui, 38, and Amar Hussein, 52, aimed to cause “untold harm” but their plot was thwarted as they unknowingly laid bare their scheme to an undercover operative (UCO).

Saadaoui was told by a judge at Preston Crown Court on Friday that he must serve a minimum of 37 years in custody, while Hussein will serve at least 26 years.

Saadaoui, of Abram, Wigan, and Hussein, of no fixed address, were convicted by a jury in December of preparing acts of terrorism between December 2023 and May 2024.

Main instigator Saadaoui aimed to smuggle four AK-47 assault rifles, two handguns and 900 rounds of ammunition into the UK in what police chiefs said could have been Britain’s deadliest terrorist incident.

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Months earlier the father-of-two, originally from Tunisia, paid a deposit for the weapons and believed he had arranged for their importation with a like-minded extremist but who in fact was the UCO, referred to in court as Farouk.

Saadaoui told Farouk he could independently obtain a firearm via Sweden and indicated he was looking to bring guns from eastern Europe. Separately he had bought an air weapon and had visited a shooting range.

Counter-terrorism police intervened on May 8 2024, with more than 200 officers involved, as Saadaoui was arrested at a hotel car park in Bolton when he went to collect some of the firearms, which had been deactivated.

No specific attack target site or date was identified but prosecutors said the defendants planned to launch a gun assault on an antisemitism march and then head to north Manchester to kill more Jews.

Saadaoui hero-worshipped Islamic State (IS) terrorist Abdelhamid Abaaoud who orchestrated the 2015 Paris terror attacks in which 130 people were killed and hundreds more injured in gun attacks across the city.

He came to the attention of the authorities when he used 10 Facebook accounts, none of which were in his own name, to spread a torrent of Islamic extremist views, as Farouk was deployed to gain his trust online and later in person.

Saadaoui recruited fellow IS sympathiser Hussein, a Kuwaiti national, who worked and lived at a furniture shop in Bolton, Greater Manchester, to assist his plans.

The pair travelled to Dover, Kent, in March 2024 to conduct hostile reconnaissance on how a weapon could be smuggled through the port without detection.

On his return, Saadaoui travelled to Prestwich and Higher Broughton in north Manchester where he carried out similar surveillance on Jewish nurseries, schools, synagogues and shops.

A safe house was also secured in Bolton for the storage of the weapons as both men returned to Dover two months later where they believed they were watching the firearms coming into the country.