The Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police has issued a public apology, admitting that the force missed an opportunity to stop the man who carried out the attack at the Heaton Park synagogue. The apology has renewed scrutiny of what the police knew before the attack and why the warning signs were not acted upon in time to prevent the violence.
The attack at the synagogue caused the deaths of two innocent people before the attacker was shot dead by police at the scene. In acknowledging its failings, the force said it had missed a chance to intervene, a striking admission that places the handling of the case at the centre of questions now facing Greater Manchester Police.
It has since emerged that, just two months before the synagogue attack, the attacker had been working on a separate terror plot alongside a friend, Mohammed Bashir. Bashir has now been jailed for life over those plans, underlining that the two men had already been pursuing violent intentions well before the attack at the place of worship took place.
According to the investigation, the pair were caught on CCTV at the mosque they attended together, where they spoke about being excited to kill men and women during an attack. They were recorded discussing their plans in the knowledge that they would not come back alive, a chilling indication of how far their intentions had developed.
The two men were described as associates from 2023 who attended the same mosque and exhibited the same extremist mindset, marked by a very strong anti-Semitic prejudice. Investigators pointed to the shared outlook of the pair as a central thread linking the earlier plot to the mindset that ultimately fed into the attack on the synagogue.
As part of the earlier plot, the pair planned to target the UK Defence Academy near Swindon, which they believed was being used to train Israeli soldiers. In August 2025 they drove down to the site together and went inside the reception area, a step that showed the plot had moved beyond discussion into active reconnaissance of a potential target.
The apology from Greater Manchester Police brings together two strands of the same story, the terror plot that led to Mohammed Bashir being jailed for life and the later attack at the Heaton Park synagogue in which two people died. The force's admission that it missed an opportunity to stop the attacker is now likely to shape the wider examination of how the threat was assessed and handled.