Terrorist who planned attack against "IDF soldiers in the UK" sentenced to life imprisonment

The court in Manchester sentenced 31-year-old Muhammad Asim Bashir yesterday, Thursday, to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 17 years, after he pleaded guilty to preparing an act of terrorism and assisting in planning an attack with Jihad al-Shami — the terrorist who carried out the attack at the Heaton Park Synagogue in Manchester last October, in which a Jewish worshiper was murdered and another person was killed by police fire.

According to the verdict, on August 14, 2025, Bashir drove al-Shami from Manchester to the UK Defence Academy in Shrivenham. The round trip took about ten hours. At the base, the two conducted a 15-minute "preliminary reconnaissance" as part of the preparations for the attack.

Judge Bobbie Cheema-Grubb determined that the two chose the academy because they believed that IDF soldiers were training there and planned to attack them. The purpose of the trip was to gather intelligence for an attack that would cause many casualties. Bashir served as the driver, and al-Shami recorded notes about the base's security arrangements on his phone under the heading "Espionage."

She noted that the defendant chose not to testify at the trial. During police interrogations, he claimed that he and al-Shami were just friends from the mosque and that he "would not have thought, even in a million years," that al-Shami would carry out an attack on a synagogue. The judge determined that this was a "false version" intended to hide his extremist worldview.

In response to the indictment three months ago, he admitted that he drove al-Shami to the military academy, but claimed he did not know it was a reconnaissance trip for an attack, believing instead that al-Shami wanted to see a house he was considering moving to. The judge rejected the claim: "This version was a bundle of lies."

After he had already pleaded guilty, he admitted that in the days before the tour, he and al-Shami discussed a rumor that IDF soldiers were training in the UK and talked about carrying out "some kind of violent attack" at the site.

He told the probation officer that the violence in Palestine angered him, leading him to admire and spread the rhetoric used by hate preachers like Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical US-born Muslim cleric of Yemeni descent, who was considered one of the most influential jihadist preachers in the world until he was eliminated in 2011 by a drone strike.

It also emerged in Bashir's trial that after the synagogue attack, it was discovered that British police had previously held al-Shami's mobile phones, but did not check their contents in real-time. Thus, only after the synagogue attack were the correspondences between him and Bashir exposed, which included violent and antisemitic content and terror planning.

"It is clear that the fact that we did not examine the data we had before the attack was a missed opportunity," said the Manchester Police Chief, apologizing to the Jewish community.

The investigation team managed to access cloud data from several mobile phones linked to al-Shami, which revealed internet searches for weapons and people with ties to the IDF. This, along with security camera footage, provided decisive evidence against Bashir, who had taken calculated steps to cover his tracks and destroy digital evidence.

"You were born and raised in Manchester. You did not reveal what caused you to turn your back on the society in which you grew up," the judge stated to Bashir during sentencing. "The documentation shows two men who were equal partners as they planned an atrocity against a British military facility."

Senior police officer Rob Potts, operationally responsible for counter-terrorism police in the North West, said: "Muhammad Bashir is a dangerous man with extremist views. My thoughts today are with all those affected by the attack, especially with the loved ones of those who were taken from their lives."