By Sam Tobin and Andy Bruce
LONDON, Dec 23 (Reuters) – Two men were found guilty on Tuesday of plotting to kill hundreds of people in an Islamic State-inspired gun attack on England’s Jewish community, a planned attack that investigators say demonstrates the resurgent risk posed by the militant group.
Police and prosecutors said Walid Saadaoui, 38, and Amar Hussein, 52, who went on trial a week after an unrelated deadly attack on a synagogue in the nearby northwest city of Manchester in October, were Islamic extremists who wanted to use automatic firearms to kill as many Jews as possible.
Had their plans gone ahead, it would have resulted in “one of, if not the deadliest terrorist attack in British history”, said Deputy Chief Constable Robert Potts, who is in charge of counter-terrorism policing in the north-west of England.
Their convictions come just over a week after a mass shooting at a Jewish Hanukkah holiday on Sydney’s Bondi Beach in which 15 people were killed.
Islamic State said the Australian attacks were a “source of pride”. Although the jihadist group has not claimed responsibility, its response has heightened fears of a rise in violent Islamist extremism.
Although they did not pose the same threat a decade ago, when Islamic State controlled large swathes of Iraq and Syria, European security officials warn that IS and al Qaeda-affiliated groups are again looking to export violence abroad, radicalizing would-be attackers online.
“You can see signs that some of these terrorist threats are starting to grow again and start to escalate,” British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said last week.
TWO MEN PREPARED TO BECOME MARTYRS
British prosecutors told jurors that Saadaoui and Hussein had “embraced the views” of Islamic State and were prepared to risk their own lives to become “martyrs”.
Saadaoui arranged for two assault rifles, an automatic pistol and nearly 200 rounds of ammunition to be smuggled into Britain through the port of Dover when he was arrested in May 2024, prosecutor Harpreet Sandhu said.
He added that Saadaoui planned to get two more rifles, another pistol and collect at least 900 rounds of ammunition. Unbeknownst to him, a man known as “Farouk” he was trying to get the guns from was an undercover agent, which police said meant his plan never came close to being put into action.
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 worshiped” Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who coordinated that attack.
Saadaoui said in a message to “Farouk,” whom he considered a fellow militant, that the Paris attack was “the biggest operation since 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 agent and some of the things he said, it was very clear that he felt that a less sophisticated attack with less lethal weapons was not good enough,” Potts said.
“Because, in fact, it was his role and his duty to kill as many Jews as possible, and that was not going to be achieved by using a knife or, for example, a vehicle as a weapon.”
Both Saadaoui and Hussein have pleaded not guilty, with Saadaoui saying he went along with the plot out of fear for his life.
Hussein did not testify and barely attended the trial after angrily shouting from the bench on the first day “how many babies?” in an apparent reference to Israel’s war in Gaza.
They were convicted at Preston Crown Court of one count of preparing terrorist acts.
Walid Saadaoui’s brother, Bilel Saadaoui, 36, was found guilty of failing to disclose information about acts of terrorism, but prosecutors said he was reluctant to join the attack.
THE ISLAMIC STATE THREAT IS GROWING
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 replacing Al Qaeda.
At the height of its power from 2014-17, Islamic State held parts of the two countries, ruling over millions of people and imposing a strict and brutal interpretation of Islamic sharia law.
Its fighters have also carried out or inspired attacks in dozens of cities around the world, which have often been claimed by Islamic State even without any real connection.
The SITE Intelligence Group said in the wake of the Bondi Beach attack in Australia that Islamic State had encouraged Muslims to take action elsewhere, particularly in Belgium.
A European intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said IS was flooding social media with propaganda and while this only affected a handful of people, it meant there were more terrorism investigations than last year.
Ken McCallum, the head of Britain’s domestic spy agency, MI5, said in October that his service and police had foiled 19 late-stage attack plots since the start of 2020 and intervened to counter many hundreds of other terror threats.
“Terrorism thrives in the seedy corners of the internet, where poisonous ideologies of all kinds collide with volatile, often chaotic, individual lives,” McCallum said.
(Reporting by Sam Tobin in London and Andy Bruce in Manchester; Writing by Michael Holden; Editing by Mark Heinrich)