Men guilty over Jewish community gun attack plot

Two men have been found guilty of planning a gun attack to cause "untold harm" to the Jewish community in Manchester.

Walid Saadaoui, 38, and Amar Hussein, 52, had a "visceral dislike" of Jewish people and arranged for guns to be smuggled into the UK as part of an "Isis-inspired plot", Preston Crown Court heard.

They believed they were planning the attacks with a third man, known to them as Farouk, who they thought shared their extremist views but was actually an undercover operative.

Greater Manchester Police (GMP) said the main instigator Walid Saadaoui had plotted to carry out what "could potentially have been the deadliest terrorist attack in UK history".

Walid Saadaoui, of Abram in Wigan, and Hussein, of no fixed abode, were found guilty of preparing acts of terrorism between 13 December 2023 and 9 May 2024.

A third man, Saadaoui's younger brother Bilel Saadaoui, 36, has been convicted of failing to disclose information about acts of terrorism.

Walid Saadaoui aimed to smuggle four AK-47 assault rifles, two handguns and 900 rounds of ammunition into the UK.

How gun plot targeting Jewish community was stopped

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 in Farouk, who was an undercover operative.

He told Farouk he could independently get 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.

Saadaoui was arrested in a hotel car park in Bolton on 8 May 2024 when he went to collect some of the firearms, which had been deactivated, from the back of a car.

The prosecution said two assault rifles, a semi-automatic pistol and nearly 200 rounds of ammunition were found in the vehicle.

But counter-terrorism police said they were in control of the supply and delivery of the weapons in order to protect the public.

Hussein and Bilel Saadaoui, who were both elsewhere, were arrested minutes later.

The trial heard Walid Saadaoui had been planning to "martyr himself" in the attack.

He had prepared a will and had left a copy with his brother, along with access to his belongings and tens of thousands of pounds in cash to help provide for his family.

Walid Saadaoui 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.

Farouk was deployed to gain his trust online and later in person.

Walid Saadaoui used one of his fake accounts to join the Facebook group of the Jewish Representative Council of Greater Manchester which contained details of a "March Against Antisemitism" held in the city centre on January 21 last year which thousands attended.

Days later he told Farouk: "Here in Manchester, we have the biggest Jewish community.

"God willing we will degrade and humiliate them (in the worst way possible), and hit them where it hurts."

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

Bilel Saadaoui, of Hindley, Wigan, was not planning to take part in the attacks but knew what his older brother was doing and sympathised with the views of the so-called Islamic State group.

The trial was shown WhatsApp messages between the pair which "provided a flavour of the views they held about Jewish people".

In one message, Bilel Saadaoui sent Hussein a link to a news report that a number of Jewish people had been killed in a bridge collapse, and he added the hashtag "Beloved Palestine".

Giving evidence Walid Saadaoui denied he had an extreme ideology and claimed he was "playing along" with Farouk.

He said his intention was to sabotage the plans before they came to fruition as he aimed to cut up the weapons with an angle grinder and then alert the authorities.

Hussein told detectives he was not part of any terror attack plan and said the evidence of the undercover operative was "fantasy".

He also told them: "Your government, your Prime Minister has sent weapons to kill our children in Israel.

"Terrorism is our religion. Koran say terrorism is normal. We are proud, we say terrorism is proud."

His barrister told jurors that Hussein held "very firm opinions" about the conflict in Gaza but that did not make him a terrorist.

All three defendants will be sentenced on 13 February.

'Lethal weaponry'

Following the verdicts, Assistant Chief Constable of GMP Robert Potts said Walid Saadaou's plan could "potentially have been the deadliest terrorist attack in UK history".

"Some of the things he said made it very clear that he regarded a less sophisticated attack with less lethal weaponry as not being good enough as he saw it as his duty to kill as many Jewish people as he could."

Frank Ferguson, head of the Crown Prosecution Service's special crime and counter-terrorism division, said it "was a deeply disturbing plot inspired by extremist ideology".

He said Farouk was deployed as a "highly-trained witness who made sure their plot did not succeed and secured valuable evidence directly from the mouths of the terrorists".

Mark Gardner, chief executive of Jewish security charity the Community Security Trust, praised police for scuppering the plans, adding this plot would make people "very, very fearful".

He said the plotters simply wanted to kill Jews.

"They don't care who those Jews are. They don't stop to ask these Jews what their opinion is of Israel, or whether they support Manchester United, or anything.

"They want to kill Jews, end of story. It's the same as Nazis."