UK Terror Plot: Men Guilty of Targeting Jewish Community

Two men in the United Kingdom have been found guilty of plotting a terrorist attack on the Jewish community near Manchester. The court in the city of Preston eight proved that the pair wanted to kill as many Jewish people as possible with automatic firearms. Police said it could have been “the deadliest terrorist attack in UK history”.

The two men, Waid Saadui (38) and the 52-year-old Amar Hussein is said to have been inspired by IS. A third man, Saadaoui’s 36-year-old brother, has also been convicted. He was not actively involved in the preparations, but was convicted of failing to disclose information about a possible terrorist attack. They will hear their sentence from the judge at the beginning of February.

According to the police, the convictions are not related to the deadly attack on a synagogue in Manchester in early October.

According to prosecutors, the men had embraced the views of the Islamic State and were willing to sacrifice themselves for this ideology. At the time of the arrest, the main suspect Walid Saadaoui was trying to buy weapons and almost 200 bullets. He also planned to have more weapons and at least 900 bullets smuggled into the UK. Amar Hussein and younger brother, Bilel Saadaoui, were arrested shortly after him.

The weapons that Walid Saadaoui wanted to buy are similar to those used in the 2015 attack on the Bataclan concert hall in Paris. In the coordinated series of attacks, terrorists shot dead more than 130 people and blew themselves up in just a few hours.

Saadaoui is also said to admire the mastermind behind the attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud. He used a photo of him as a profile picture on one of his social media accounts. Those accounts, where Saadaoui spread Islamic extremist ideas, made him stand out to the authorities.

Two years ago, Saadaoui came into contact online with a man with whom he thought he shared extremist ideas. The man called himself Farouk and they exchanged messages regularly. Confidant Farouk turned out to actually be an undercover agent. It soon became clear that the main suspect wanted to commit a large-scale attack, and that “he saw it as his role and duty to kill as many Jews as possible,” police say.

Saadaoui involved Hussein in the plan and introduced him to undercover agent Farouk. They believed that Farouk could supply weapons from abroad. According to police, in the following months the two worked out the plans, carried out reconnaissance and visited, among other things, the port of Dover, through which the weapons would be transported.

Saadaoui’s messages also showed that a “less-sophisticated attack was not good enough.” For example, he wrote that his goal would not be achieved “by the use of a knife or vehicle as a weapon.” In addition, the duo allegedly planned to kill any police officers or enforcers who stood in their way. Saadaoui had left tens of thousands of pounds in cash for his family at his home and shared his will with his younger brother, British newspaper The Guardian reported.

Police praised the undercover officer “who put himself in significant danger every time he encountered two potential terrorists. He could have become a target himself at any time, but risked his own safety in the interest of protecting the public.”

The head of the British security service MI5, Ken McCallum, recently said in a speech that the number of terrorism investigations is reaching record numbers. In the past five years, nineteen late-stage attack plans have been prevented in the United Kingdom, the security service writes.

The conviction comes just over a week after the deadly attack in Sydney, where fifteen people were killed. Police emphasize how the “case comes at a time of great concern and fear within the Jewish community.” British Foreign Secretary Cooper also expressed her concerns last week: “There are signs that the terrorist threat is increasing again and escalating,” she warned.