A man has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 17 years at Manchester Crown Court for planning a terror attack on a British military facility. Mohammed Bashir, a long-standing friend of Jihad al-Shamid, was sentenced after the pair were found to have prepared an atrocity together, in a case that has drawn attention because of its links to a later deadly attack on a synagogue in the city.
According to the case set out in court, the two men had targeted the UK Defence Academy in Swindon. They believed the base was being used to train soldiers from the Israeli Defence Forces. Police said both men were deeply anti-Semitic and that this was the driving motivation behind their plans, which were rooted in what were described as religious and political reasons.
The pair went as far as carrying out reconnaissance of the site. On the 14th of August last year, they drove down to the base in a black Kia Picanto belonging to al-Shamid, the same car he would later use in the synagogue attack. They conducted hostile reconnaissance and even went inside the facility as far as the reception area, with al-Shamid making notes on his phone about the security arrangements in a file titled espionage.
The two men had also been part of a WhatsApp group that al-Shamid had set up, called Aspiring to the Ranks of the Elite, in which they shared extremist views. The court heard that Bashir alone had sent around 2,000 messages to the group. These included deeply anti-Semitic and extremist content, with discussion of martyrdom and calls for violence against Jewish people, underlining the mindset behind the planned attack.
Two months after this separate plot was prepared, al-Shamid went on to attack Heaton Park Synagogue on his own last October. Two people were killed in that attack, and al-Shamid himself was shot dead by police at the scene. Investigators stressed, however, that they accepted Mohammed Bashir had not been involved in the synagogue attack itself, and his sentencing related to the earlier plot.
In his sentencing remarks, the judge told Bashir that he was Manchester born and bred, and that he had not revealed what had caused him to turn against the society in which he had grown up, been schooled and worked, and where his family had been able to practise their religion in freedom. The judge said footage from a mosque on the 9th of August had shown two equally engaged and enthusiastic men planning an atrocity, and that the case must stand as a warning to others drawn to violent extremism.
The conclusion of the case also prompted an apology from Greater Manchester Police. The force revealed that it had previously held two of al-Shamid's phones, seized when he had been arrested on two earlier occasions, once for breaching a non-molestation order and once on suspicion of rape. Those handsets were not searched at the time, yet they contained evidence of the plot and of his extremist views. Chief Constable Sir Stephen Watson apologised, acknowledging that opportunities to stop al-Shamid may have been missed.