How gun plot on Manchester’s Jewish community was stopped

Two men who plotted to attack Jews in Greater Manchester in what could have been “the UK’s most deadly terrorist attack” were caught by an undercover operative who put himself in “significant danger”, police said.

Walid Saadaoui, 38, arranged to smuggle four AK-47 assault rifles, two handguns and 900 rounds of ammunition into the country.

Saadaoui worked together with 52-year-old Amar Hussein, and another man called Farouk, who they believed shared the same extreme ideology.

But Farouk was actually an undercover operative.

Farouk was authorised to make contact with Saadaoui after detectives linked several Facebook pages he had set up using fakes names to spread Islamic extremist views, Greater Manchester Police said.

“He put himself in a position of significant personal danger,” Assistant Chief Constable (ACC) Rob Potts said.

“He took risks with his life to give us the ability to protect the public.”

Saadaoui’s trial was told he hero-worshipped Islamic State (IS) terrorist Abdelhamid Abaaoud who orchestrated the 2015 Paris terror attacks in which 130 people were killed.

He described the killing of 130 people and wounding of hundreds more as a “great event.”

Farouk made contact with Saadaoui in December 2022 before the pair met in a car park in Bolton to discuss a plan to bring the weapons into the country from Europe.

“We didn’t know who he was at the time so we had to do more work to identify that individual,” ACC Potts said.

“Through that we were able to gain and understanding of his ideology, his mindset and what he was hoping to achieve.”

The operative’s role was “completely crucial”, ACC Potts said.

“It gave us the best ability to gain the evidence we needed but also to control the operation and enabled us to run it without taking any risks involving members of the public.”

Saadaoui, who is understood to have UK citizenship, was a hotel entertainer in the Tunisian coastal resort of Sousse more than a decade before he plotted the mass killing spree.

By day he joined guests, mainly Western tourists, in pool sessions of aerobics and water polo, while at night he helped stage dance shows and quiz contests.

He started a relationship with an English holidaymaker named Jane and told his trial at Preston Crown Court they lived in his home country for a year and got married before they decided to move to the UK in 2012.

Saadaoui successfully applied for a work visa and the couple moved to Clacton-on Sea, Essex, where he worked in the town’s Haven Holiday Village and was employed in its shops, bakery and arcade.

He said he saved up by working extra hours at the site for six years and in April 2018 bought The Albatross restaurant in Great Yarmouth, with the assistance of a bank loan.

His marriage had already finished earlier that year, he said, and he later met his second wife, Michelle, who was already working at the Italian restaurant, and they went on to have two children.

In 2023, he sold the restaurant and home as his family moved to a house in Wigan, Greater Manchester, which he bought in cash. In July and August of that year, he emptied his bank account with multiple withdrawals.

Prosecutors in his trial said Saadaoui moved to Greater Manchester with the sole intention of ramping up his plans for martyrdom in a terror atrocity aimed at Jews in the region.

Saadaoui recruited fellow IS sympathiser Hussein, a Kuwaiti national, who worked and lived at a furniture shop in Bolton to assist his plans.

Hussein told detectives he was not part of any plan and said the evidence of the undercover officer was “fantasy”.

His barrister told jurors that Hussein held “very firm opinions” about the conflict in Gaza but that did not make him a terrorist.

Saadaoui younger brother, Bilel Saadaoui was found guilty of failing to disclose information about the plans.

He also worked in a hotel in Sousse and went on to marry an English tourist, a widowed hairdresser on holiday with her two young children.

They met in 2010 and started a relationship a year later before they married in November 2014 and moved to Hindley, Wigan.

Since 2020 he had worked as a casual worker at Pound Bargains in Market Street, Hindley.

The trial heard he was his older brother’s confidant and shared his support for the Islamic State. He also had a key to Walid Saadaoui’s safe and a copy of his will, the court heard.

When Walid Saadaoui went to collect weapons which he intended to use in a gun attack, his younger brother messaged him: “May Allah Safeguard you.

“If you see of them something that displease/disturb you or almost expose you, then dispense or return. This is better for you”.

Bilel Saadaoui has leave to remain in the UK until next September, the court heard.

Their plan was to get the weapons and ammunition and identify a mass-gathering of Jewish people they could attack. .

Walid Saadaoui and Hussein were planning to target an antisemitism march in the summer of 2023 after an earlier gathering in January attracted 6,500 people.

Police said they believed Walid Saadaoui was planning to take his own life after the attack as they had seen evidence of ‘moving on behaviour’.

The force said he had buried £74,000 in cash for his family in a safe in the concrete floor of a shed in his garden.

The court heard that Saadaoui’s Facebook account featured a profile picture of the 2015 Paris attack orchestrator Abaaoud.

Undercover operative Farouk said he took on the “persona” of a supporter of the so-called Islamic State group in Arabic messages that followed with Walid Saadaoui.

In one message, Walid Saadaoui said: “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 is also later said to have written: “I can use a knife in the operation but this will not be enough to take revenge, only the automatic gun. I want to kill as many [as possible].

“I have an overwhelming anger. I feel sometimes I will go out and [kill] them with stones. Then I say to myself it will be a waste, I have to do many.”

Farouk replied to him: “Knife is not a solution.

“I have to endeavour the biggest number possible. This is my intention God willing.”

Prosecutor Harpreet Sandhu KC asked Farouk during the trial: “Was this part of your persona?”

He replied: “That’s correct.”

The undercover operative, who gave evidence screened from the defendants and the public gallery, added: “In this example I was mirroring what Walid had said to me previously.

“In order for me to work in this line of work you have to speak a certain way. If you don’t mirror in a certain way then he won’t tell me more about his intention.”

Farouk said he would arrange for the weapons to be brought into Europe and smuggle them back to England in a car on the ferry to Dover.

The men believed they were smuggling in two AK47 rifles and four hundred rounds of ammunition. Counter terrorism police said they were in control of the supply and delivery of the weapons the whole time to protect the public.

“If they’d been able to achieve what they were aiming to achieve with the weapons they were seeking to take possession of this could have potentially been the most devastating and deadly terrorist attack in UK history,” ACC Potts said.

Walid Saadaoui was arrested in a hotel car park in Bolton next to the car on 8 May 2023.

The court heard two assault rifles, a semi-automatic pistol and almost 200 rounds of ammunition were found in the vehicle.

Hussein and Bilel Saddaoui, who were both elsewhere, were arrested minutes later.

Walid Saadaoui and Hussein were found guilty of preparing acts of terrorism between 13 December 2023 and 9 May 2024.

Bilel Saadaoui has been convicted of failing to disclose information about acts of terrorism.