When Walid Saadaoui shut the doors of the Albatross, his Italian restaurant in the English seaside town of Great Yarmouth, in March 2023, he was inundated with messages from well-wishers.
“Hope your future venture goes well,” read one of numerous warm comments from customers responding to his announcement on social media, where he said he was closing the business to spend more time with his family.
But the move was not for that reason. He was leaving because he wanted to fulfill a long-held ambition to commit a terrorist attack in the name of the Islamic State, according to evidence presented at his recent trial on terrorism charges.
In a recorded phone conversation presented at the trial in Preston, northern England, Mr. Saadaoui said he had considered carrying out a car-ramming in his home country of Tunisia, where he worked as a hotel entertainer at a beach resort more than a decade ago.
After he married an English tourist and moved to Britain in 2012, he also contemplated a knife or vehicle assault, he said in the phone conversation. But it was only after the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that he settled on his target — the Jewish population of Manchester — and began envisioning using a gun to “kill as many as possible.”
On Friday, Mr. Saadaoui was sentenced to life in prison, with a minimum term of 37 years, after being convicted in December of preparing acts of terrorism.
Amar Hussein, 52, a fellow ISIS supporter whom Mr. Saadaoui had recruited for the planned attack, was convicted of the same offense and sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 26 years.
The plans were foiled at a late stage, in “one of the most significant terrorist plot disruptions we have seen in the U.K. for several years,” said Assistant Chief Constable Rob Potts, who worked on the counterterrorism unit that led the investigation.
The 11-week trial last year provided a window into the way the Islamic State has seized on rising levels of antisemitism to incite attacks by supporters after the start of the Gaza war. Although the terrorist group’s core organization and territory has been eroded over the past decade, it has used online propaganda to encourage international attacks.
In October, two victims died during an attack on a synagogue in Manchester. In December, two armed gunmen opened fire at a Hanukkah event at Bondi Beach in Australia. In both cases, the perpetrators declared their allegiance to the Islamic State.
Prosecutors said Mr. Saadaoui had “embraced Islamic extremism” for years and had disseminated ISIS propaganda on Facebook since at least 2022, using a series of false identities.
The British security services became aware of Mr. Saadaoui’s intention to commit a terrorist attack in 2023, the police said. They placed him under intensive surveillance and an undercover officer known as “Farouk” gained Mr. Saadaoui’s trust after posing as a like-minded ISIS supporter.
In evidence presented at the trial, Mr. Saadaoui, 38, boasted about how he had used Facebook accounts in fake names to infiltrate Jewish community groups in the Manchester area, where he moved with his family after selling his restaurant.
“I was watching everything on a daily basis,” he told Farouk in a January 2024 phone call. “I see their gatherings and their marches, their condemnations, their meetings.”
At the same time, under his other Facebook identities, Mr. Saadaoui posted a stream of ISIS propaganda.
Prosecutors said he had conducted particular research on the area of Manchester that contains the greatest concentration of Jewish people in the city, including the synagogue targeted in October.
Mr. Saadaoui took Farouk to the district on March 17, 2024. He said that his “main target” was a pro-Israel demonstration but that he also wanted to kill Christians, saying, “After we finish with the Jews, with their protest, we move on to the crusaders.”
Prosecutors said he discussed various methods of attack with Farouk and with Mr. Hussein, who lived in the nearby town of Bolton.
Mr. Saadaoui ordered four assault rifles, two pistols and at least 900 rounds of ammunition from Farouk, the undercover operative. And he made preparations for his own death, selling his pet birds and entrusting his brother, Bilel Saadaoui, 37, with money for his family.
But when Mr. Saadaoui arrived at a hotel to receive the weapons on May 8, 2024, the police were waiting to arrest him.
During the trial, Mr. Saadaoui and Mr. Hussein denied making preparations for a terrorist attack, but both were found guilty. Bilel Saadaoui was convicted of failing to disclose information about an act of terrorism and was sentenced to six years.
Dr. Shiraz Maher, an expert on radicalization who is based at the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, said Mr. Saadaoui was part of a cohort who became ISIS supporters at the height of its power a decade ago but who took no action at the time. They had been “reactivated” by the Gaza war, Dr. Maher said, as the Islamic State saw the conflict as a way to “keep itself relevant.”
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