Waiting for zero hour

The men who plotted mass murder on the streets of Manchester

- Chris Osuh Community affairs correspondent

When Walid Saadaoui recruited Amar Hussein to join him in the mass murder of Jewish people Greater Manchester, Hussein wept with joy. For years, the two men had been sleeper agents for the Islamic State terrorist group. Each had lived quietly, waiting for the moment to stage an attack and for the support to make it happen.

Now, finally, it seemed that “zero hour” - as they called it - had arrived. They planned to disguise themselves as Jews to infiltrate a march against antisemitism in Manchester city centre before opening fire on the crowd with assault rifles.

The pair hoped to throw the emergency services into chaos by setting off 999 calls across Greater Manchester, allowing them to escape and continue their attack in the suburbs at the centre of the region’s Jewish community.

Saadaoui also planned to attack Christians, saying: “God willing ... after we finish with the Jews ... we move on to the crusaders.”

It would have been, according to senior detectives, the worst terrorist attack the UK had seen.

Both men envisaged being “martyred”, but neither thought a crucial player in their plot could be an undercover operative (UCO). Because of the courage of the UCO, known as “Farouk”, Saadaoui was caught in a hotel car park, while Hussein was arrested at the shop where he worked.

A prosecution source said of Saadaoui, the prime mover: “This was a man who was quite prepared to go out and kill children and leave his own in the process.” They added: “At one point he says: ‘You know, if we have an AK-47 left over, I will leave it for my son - so he can do what I do when he grows up.’”

The disturbing mindset and tactics of the secret IS network of “lone wolves” and sympathisers were revealed in unprecedented detail in a forensic prosecution case laid out in a three-month trial at Preston crown court.