World
Manchester synagogue terrorist plotted to kill Israeli soldiers at a UK military school
The terrorist who carried out a deadly ramming and stabbing at a Manchester synagogue last year also planned to attack a UK military academy, believing Israeli soldiers were studying there, British outlets have reported, citing prosecutors.
It is unclear whether any Israeli officers were studying at the school at the time of the plot.
On October 2, British-Syrian citizen Jihad al-Shamie rammed his car into the gates of Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation as congregants gathered for Yom Kippur morning prayer services. He stabbed Melvin Cravitz, 66, to death after disembarking, then tried to storm the synagogue before police shot him dead. Adrian Daulby, 53, died from a single gunshot wound to the chest fired by a police officer responding to the situation.
Shamie’s friend, 31-year-old delivery driver Mohammad Bashir, pleaded guilty Wednesday at the Manchester Crown Court to conducting “hostile reconnaissance” along with him against the UK Defence Academy two months before the fatal rampage.
Bashir appeared for sentencing over the unrealized plot Wednesday, the BBC reported, after being arrested in November due to his links to Shamie, whom he met at their local mosque.
Bashir, for his part, was not accused of involvement in the synagogue attack, but helped plan a similar attack at the defense academy headquartered in Oxfordshire, the prosecution said.
“The attack that was being planned [on the UK Defence Academy] was of the sort that Jihad Al-Shamie in fact carried out on October 2 at Heaton Park Synagogue in Manchester,” said Jonathan Polnay for the prosecution, according to the BBC.
The attorney said the men planned “an attack involving weapons that would cause multiple fatalities and have national and international impact.”
According to Polnay, both Shamie and Bashir were “interested in, and regularly discussed, violent jihad.”
The court heard that on August 14, Bashir drove Shamie’s car to Shrivenham, Oxfordshire, where the military academy is headquartered, and back, in what amounted to a 10-hour round trip.
Prosecutors believe the pair stayed in the institute’s vicinity for around 15 minutes, according to news reports from the hearing. At this point, Shamie made an entry in his iPhone notes app called “espionage” describing the base’s reception area, the Manchester Evening News said.
The note read: “Walk in, there’s a desk from one side to the other, two old women sat there. Behind them is a corridor. Either side are two rooms open. Women coming in and out at the back of building there’s a door that leads to a search bay.”
Days prior to the espionage attempt, mosque security camera footage picked up a conversation between the two while they sat in an empty prayer hall, reading an article about IDF officers studying at the Royal College of Defence Studies in central London, an arm of the UK Defence Academy. Shamie had reached the news article by searching for “IDF soldiers UK,” British outlets reported.
In September, the London-based Royal College of Defence Studies banned Israelis from enrolling in its program next year over the Gaza war.
After the visit, Bashir sold his phone to a phone shop where it was subject to a factory reset, the Manchester Evening News said. He deleted the contents of his new phone prior to his arrest.
Polnay, as quoted in the report, said Shamie continued to search the web for crossbows and other weapons even when Bashir was not present, taking an interest in attacks on IDF soldiers. He turned his attention to Heaton Park synagogue on August 29.
“Thereafter he made a number of searches relating to that location and individuals associated with [the synagogue]. By September 11 he was searching for meat cleavers and travel bags for them,” Polnay told the court, according to the Manchester Evening News.
Bashir, a British-Pakistani dual citizen, left the UK two days after the attack for a trip to Pakistan, using tickets he had booked on August 19. He was arrested upon his return.
