A British court on Friday sentenced two men convicted of conspiring to kill hundreds in an attack targeting the Jewish community in England, similar to attacks by ISIS.
Crown prosecutors said the plan would have caused far greater casualties than last December’s mass shooting at Sydney’s Bondi Beach.
“Walid Al-Saadawi” (38 years old) and “Ammar Hussein” (52 years old) were convicted after their trial before Preston Crown Court, which began a week after another bloody attack targeting a synagogue in the city of Manchester, northwest of the country.
Prosecutors described the two men as “Islamist extremists” and indicated that they intended to use automatic firearms to kill as many Jews as possible.
The conviction came more than a week after a mass shooting during a Hanukkah celebration on Bondi Beach, which left 15 people dead.
Prosecutor Harpreet Sandhu said that if Al-Saadawi and Hussein had been able to carry out their plan, the result would have been “much more serious” compared to the attacks that took place in Australia and Manchester.
Judge Mark Wall sentenced “Al-Saadawi” to a minimum of 37 years in prison, and “Hussein” to a minimum of 26 years in prison, considering that they were “very close to being fully prepared to carry out this plan.”
“Hussein” refused to attend the sentencing hearing, after he abstained from attending most of his trial sessions, which the judge considered evidence of his cowardice, describing him as “brave enough to plan to threaten a group of defenseless people with a Kalashnikov rifle, but he was not brave enough to face the consequences of his actions.”
For his part, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer commented on the ruling, describing it as “good.”
Starmer said in a tweet on the X platform: “This is a horrific case. I would like to thank the security authorities for bringing these hateful cowards to justice, and reassure our Jewish community that we will never back down in our fight against anti-Semitism and terrorism.”
