Terrorists sought to kill hundreds of Jews in ‘deadliest attack’ planned on UK soil, court finds
Max Aldred Digital Reporter
Two men have been convicted of terror offences, after undercover police posed as arms dealer “Farouk” and offered to import weapons for what would have otherwise been a large-scale killing of British Jews.
Two men have been found guilty of plotting a large-scale gun rampage designed to kill as many of the British Jewish community as possible, after undercover police foiled their plans to import deadly weapons.
Prosecutors said Walid Saadaoui, 38, and Amar Hussein, 52, were Islamic extremists who wanted to use automatic firearms to kill as many Jewish people as they could.
The pair were found guilty of one charge each of preparing terrorist acts on Tuesday local time (Wednesday AEDT) in Preston Crown Court.
Had their plan come to fruition, it would have resulted in “one of, if not the, deadliest terrorist attack in UK history,” Assistant Chief Constable Robert Potts of Counter-Terrorism Policing northwest England said.
Their convictions came little more than a week after a mass shooting at a Hanukkah celebration on Bondi Beach claimed the lives of 15 innocent people.
Islamic State said those attacks were a “source of pride”, while stopping short of claiming responsibility.
The reaction has heightened fears of a resurgence of Islamist extremism.
British prosecutors told the court Saadaoui and Hussein had “embraced the views” of Islamic State, and had prepared to risk their own lives in order to become “martyrs”.
Saadaoui arranged for two assault rifles, an automatic pistol and almost 200 rounds of ammunition to be smuggled into Britain through the port of Dover, the prosecution said, before he was arrested in May 2024.
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He additionally planned to obtain two more rifles, another pistol and collect at least 900 rounds.
However, unbeknownst to him, a man known as “Farouk” from whom he was attempting to acquire the weapons was an undercover operative.
Police said the ploy meant Saadaoui was never close to getting to enact his murderous plans.
Prosecutor Harpreet Sandhu said the assault rifles Saadaoui wanted were similar to those used in a 2015 Islamist militant attack on the Bataclan concert hall in Paris that killed 130 people.
He added that Saadaoui “hero-worshipped” Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who coordinated that attack.
Saadaoui said in a message to “Farouk”, whom he thought was a fellow militant, that the Paris attack was “the biggest operation after that of Osama (bin Laden)”, an apparent reference to the September 11, 2001 attack on the United States.
“Based on Walid’s communications and interactions with the undercover operative, and some of the things he said, that made it very clear that he regarded a less sophisticated attack with less lethal weaponry as not being good enough,” Assistant Chief Constable Potts said.
The SITE Intelligence Group said in the wake of the Bondi Beach attack in Australia that IS had encouraged Muslims to take action elsewhere, particularly singling out Belgium. Picture: Gaye Gerard/NewsWire
“Because, in effect, it was his role and his duty to kill as many Jewish people as he could, and that wasn’t going to be achieved via the use of a knife or, for example, potentially a vehicle as a weapon.”
Both Saadaoui and Hussein had pleaded not guilty and Saadaoui said that he had played along with the plot out of fear for his life.
Hussein did not give evidence and barely attended his trial after he angrily shouted from the dock on the first day “how many babies?” in an apparent reference to Israel’s war in Gaza.
Walid Saadaoui’s brother Bilel Saadaoui, 36, was found guilty of failing to disclose information about acts of terrorism but prosectors said he had been reluctant to join the attack.
The foiled plot is the latest in Britain and elsewhere inspired by Islamic State, which emerged in Iraq and Syria a decade ago and quickly created a “caliphate”, declaring its rule over all Muslims and largely displacing al Qaeda.
At the height of its power from 2014-17, Islamic State held swathes of the two countries, ruling over millions of people and imposing a strict, brutal interpretation of Islamic sharia law.
Its fighters also carried out or inspired attacks in dozens of cities around the world, which were often claimed by Islamic State even without any actual connection.
The SITE Intelligence Group said in the wake of the Bondi Beach attack in Australia that IS had encouraged Muslims to take action elsewhere, particularly singling out Belgium.
The foiled plot is the latest in Britain and elsewhere inspired by Islamic State, which emerged in Iraq and Syria a decade ago and quickly created a “caliphate”, declaring its rule over all Muslims and largely displacing al Qaeda. File photo: Idrees Abbas / SOPA Images via Getty Images.
A European intelligence official, speaking with Reuters on condition of anonymity, said IS was flooding social media with propaganda and while this impacted only a handful of people, it meant there were more terrorism investigations than last year.
Ken McCallum, head of Britain’s domestic spy agency MI5, said in October that his service and the police had thwarted 19 late-stage attack plots since the start of 2020, and intervened to counter many hundreds of other terrorism threats.
“Terrorism breeds in squalid corners of the internet where poisonous ideologies, of whatever sort, meet volatile, often chaotic individual lives,” Mr McCallum said.
With Reuters.
