UK court holds two men guilty of plotting Islamic State-inspired gun rampage targeting jews

Police said Walid Saadaoui & Amar Hussein were Islamic extremists who planned to use automatic weapons to kill Jews at a deadly synagogue attack in Manchester in October.

Surveillance image showing Walid Saadaoui, 38, and Amar Hussein, 52, pictured near Dover, as they have been found guilty at Preston Crown Court of plotting to kill hundreds in an Islamic State-inspired gun rampage against the Jewish community, in Britain, in this handout surveillance image dated May 8, 2025. Greater Manchester | Reuters

London: Two men were on Tuesday were convicted of plotting an attack on the Jewish community in northwest England inspired by Islamic State with the aim of killing hundreds of innocent people with automatic firearms.

Walid Saadaoui, 38, and Amar Hussein, 52, were found guilty of a single charge of preparing terrorist acts after a trial at Preston Crown Court, which began a week after an unconnected deadly attack on a synagogue in nearby Manchester.

The verdicts also come little more than a week after two men fired on a Jewish Hanukkah celebration on Sydney’s Bondi Beach, killing 15 people in another apparent IS-inspired attack that raised fears of rising antisemitism.

ANGRY DEFENDANT

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, telling jurors: “I had no intention to carry out a terrorist attack or hurt anybody.”

Hussein did not give evidence and barely attended his trial after he angrily shouted from the dock as prosecutors outlined the facts of the case on the first day, saying “how many babies?” in an apparent reference to Israel’s war in Gaza.

(Reporting by Sam Tobin in London and Andy Bruce in Manchester; editing by Mark Heinrich)

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