Walid Saadaoui's brother Bilel Saadaoui was also arrested and convicted for his role in planning a terror attack. Photo / Greater Manchester Police
British Jews are under threat, according to the police chief who helped foil an Isis-inspired massacre.
Sir Stephen Watson, the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police, said that had the plan been successful, it would have been “one of the worst atrocities” the world had seen.
Walid Saadaoui, from Wigan, and Amar Hussein, from Bolton, planned to replicate the 2015 Paris terror attacks by targeting a Jewish community in Britain’s northwest.
They bought assault rifles, handguns and hundreds of rounds of ammunition in preparation for a suicide gun attack in which they wanted to “kill as many members of the Jewish community as they could” and hoped to become “martyrs” in revenge for Israel’s actions in Gaza.
Saadaoui, 38, scouted synagogues, Jewish schools and a Kosher supermarket and also considered carrying out an attack during protests against anti-Semitism.
Hussein openly admitted being a terrorist supporter when questioned by detectives after his arrest.
Asked if he was a supporter of Isis, he told detectives: “Do you want a true answer? Yes.”
He told detectives he backed the group because “they are Muslims. They make Sharia”.
Both men were found guilty at Preston Crown Court of preparing acts of terrorism, with their main targets being the Jewish community in England’s northwest, police and the military.
The pair were jailed for life on Friday, with Saadaoui handed a minimum term of 37 years and Hussein, 52, sentenced to a minimum of 26 years.
Saadaoui’s brother Bilel, 37, of Hindley, Wigan, was found guilty of failing to disclose information about the terror plan. He was sentenced to six years in jail with an extended licence period of 12 months.
Watson, whose force dealt with the Manchester synagogue attack in October, said society had difficult questions to answer about how Jewish people in Britain were forced to live today.
He said: “There was the avoidance of something which I genuinely believe would have been truly awful and would have ranked right up there with the worst of the atrocities that we have seen across the world.
“We are seeing the manifestation of hatred moving beyond our shores globally and this is a threat to all of us. It is a threat to our Jewish communities and, if our Jewish communities are under threat, we are all under threat.
“And we all owe to our Jewish friends and neighbours a steadfast duty to stand with them in all circumstances, and that is certainly what we do as part of Greater Manchester Police, the counter-terrorism network and beyond.”
Watson said the case was “a genuinely chilling case of people who embodied and, in many respects, were absolutely intent on bringing into the true manifestation of awfulness, a hatred of Jewish people”.
“Their intent was to slaughter innocent people for no better reason than their religion,” he said. “These are committed terrorists. Of course one has to be concerned. We all have to be concerned.”
He highlighted the dangers facing Jewish children in particular, saying the community as a whole had to “put up with a way of life” unlike anybody else.
Watson said: “I think it’s some very important point to reflect upon that Jewish children are the only children in our country who day to day go to school behind large fences guarded by people with vizzy jackets and where there are routine police patrols in and around those areas.
“Our Jewish communities put up with a way of life in our country today that nobody else has to put up with.”
The plot began to unravel after an undercover officer, who was called Farouk in court but used the name Abu Bilal in communications with Saadaoui, made contact with him in December 2023, posing as a fellow jihadist.
Saadaoui told him: “May God preserve you. You need to do what he had done, make him a role model and carry out operations against the Jews and the Crusaders there, and hitting them there affects them badly.”
Saadaoui told Farouk he wanted to “kill as many as possible”, and in a voice note on Christmas Day 2023 added: “These matters of running someone over with a car or using a knife is ineffective, what is needed is an automatic gun.”
The three-month trial at Preston Crown Court heard Saadaoui had stalked Jewish Facebook groups looking for targets and paid £4400 ($9900) as an initial fee for four AK-47 assault rifles, two handguns and 1200 rounds of ammunition as he planned the attack with Hussein, a former Iraqi soldier who worked at an appliance shop in Bolton.
Saadaoui was caught “red-handed” by police in the carpark of a Lancashire hotel as he took delivery of the weapons from the boot of a rented Lexus after an undercover operation.
Saadaoui, a former hotel entertainer originally from Tunisia, married an English woman and moved to Britain in 2012, where he worked in a shop at the Haven Holiday Park in Great Yarmouth.
He bought the Albatross Italian restaurant for £25,000 in April 2018 but closed the business four years later, sold his house for £169,000 in May 2023, and moved to Wigan with his second wife and two young children.
Harpreet Sandhu, KC, prosecuting, told the court that after his move to Wigan “his focus was on planning his terrorist attacks”.
Sandhu said Saadaoui was “desperate to get his hands on firearms” and “intended to cause a colossal loss of human life through the terrorist attack he planned”.
In an impact statement read out in court on behalf of the Community Security Trust, a Jewish charity, Amanda Bomsztyk said: “For many Jewish community members, synagogues, schools and community activities are not only places of worship and education, but also cultural and social lifelines.
“Any credible threat to their physical safety deeply undermines the community’s sense of safety, not only in Greater Manchester but across the whole of the UK.”
The statement went on: “Anti-Semitism threatens not just the safety and confidence of the Jewish community, but the cohesions and the values that underpin our shared society.”
British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer welcomed the life jail terms. Writing on X in response to the sentencing, he said: “Good. This is a horrifying case.
“I want to thank law enforcement for bringing these vile cowards to justice, and reassure our Jewish community that we will never relent in our fight against anti-Semitism and terror.”
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