What we learn about Manchester synagogue attacker Jihad Al-Shamie

Jihad Al-Shamie, who was shot lifeless by police as he attacked a Manchester synagogue on Yom Kippur, had been beneath investigation over an alleged rape that was suspected to have occurred earlier this yr.

The Residence Workplace has mentioned Al-Shamie was not identified to counterterrorism police, however revelations of the rape investigation have raised questions on what Manchester police knew about him earlier than the assault.

On Friday night, greater than 24 hours after the atrocity, Larger Manchester Police confirmed that Al-Shamie had a legal historical past unrelated to terrorism. “This features a latest arrest for rape, which resulted in him being bailed,” mentioned the drive.

It didn’t say whether or not he had any earlier convictions.

Al-Shamie attacked the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation Synagogue on Thursday when it was particularly crowded for the holiest day within the Jewish calendar.

The 35-year-old was from a Syrian émigré household who on Friday expressed horror at his “heinous act” and spoke of their “profound shock”.

Residence secretary Shabana Mahmood mentioned he had come to the UK as a younger youngster and was naturalised as a citizen in 2006.

Mahmood, who’s Muslim, mentioned she had “by no means heard somebody being referred to as Jihad”. The phrase means “battle”. Jihad is a typical identify within the Arab world, amongst Christians in addition to Muslims.

An image posted on the Fb account of his father, Faraj Al-Shamie, confirmed Al-Shamie in October final yr holding a child, with the caption “Nice welcome grandson”.

Jihad Al-Shamie was the eldest of three brothers. One, Jawad, studied pharmacy on the College of Kent and, in keeping with a LinkedIn account, presently works as a locum pharmacist.

The youngest brother, Kenan, studied arithmetic at East Anglia and St Andrews universities, in keeping with his LinkedIn profile. He has labored for the previous 5 years for IBM as a software program engineer.

The household has a modest council home in Prestwich, on the north aspect of Manchester, the place neighbours instructed the Press Affiliation that they had seen Al-Shamie bench-pressing within the backyard.

The house is 2 miles from the synagogue that Al-Shamie attacked on Thursday by driving his automotive on the constructing throughout a Yom Kippur service.

He stabbed members of the congregation within the assault, which left two folks lifeless and three folks injured. Police shot Al-Shamie lifeless on the scene, together with one of many victims and one of many injured survivors.

His father’s Fb web page suggests the household had been within the UK for the reason that Nineteen Nineties. In a July publish, Faraj recounted having been in Manchester on the day of the June 1996 IRA bombing of Manchester metropolis centre.

In 2012, the then Conservative MP John Howell reported receiving threatening emails from “Jihad Alshamie” when he defended Israel after it carried out strikes on Gaza that yr, in keeping with a recent report by the Jerusalem Submit. However it’s not clear if the sender was the Al-Shamie who perpetrated the Manchester assault.

Final month, a Jihad Al-Shamie was recorded on a web-based giving portal making a £3 donation to assist an orphan with particular wants in Gaza.

In a press release on Friday posted on Faraj’s Fb account, the household expressed their “deep shock and horror” at what they referred to as his “heinous act”.

They wrote: “The Al-Shamie household within the UK and overseas strongly condemns this heinous act, which focused peaceable, harmless civilians.

“We absolutely distance ourselves from this assault and categorical our deep shock and sorrow over what has occurred. Our hearts and ideas are with the victims and their households, and we pray for his or her energy and luxury.”

Faraj, a physician who has labored in conflicts world wide together with in South Sudan, has posted repeatedly on Fb in regards to the turmoil within the Center East.

On October 7, 2023, he requested God to guard Palestine’s “heroic folks”, and mentioned footage of Hamas fighters attacking an Israeli navy camp “with easy means” confirmed that “Israel is not going to endure”.

“No matter who leads them, they’re the true compass: males assured of their victory even when their assets are restricted,” he mentioned. The publish appeared to distinction them with Syrians earlier than former dictator Bashar al-Assad’s fall, saying they have been “divided” and “plunging to the underside of the abyss”.

Again in a 2012 publish, he recounted an incident from his childhood in 1967, apparently in the course of the Six-Day Warfare between Israel and Arab states that included Syria.

“Terror unfold throughout my mom’s face when she heard the sound of airplanes that we knew have been Israeli,” he wrote, saying he noticed planes bomb a radio station as he hid amongst fig bushes along with his mom.

“I wasn’t a lot afraid as I used to be consumed with hatred for these planes . . . and for many who despatched them,” he wrote.

Like many Syrians, he welcomed the overthrow of Assad final yr by insurgents led by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham motion after greater than a decade of civil conflict, and has praised Syria’s new president Ahmed al-Sharaa. 

Faraj additionally posted content material exhibiting sympathy with Syria’s Christian minority following assaults within the wake of the revolution towards the Assad regime, and criticised sectarianism.

When clashes broke out within the southern Syria province of Sweida this summer time, through which a whole bunch have been killed in violence involving members of the Druze spiritual minority and Syrian safety forces, Faraj condemned those that carried out killings within the identify of Islam. 

“Our religion forbids us from injustice, tyranny, and hatred. It instructions us to assist the distressed, to defend the oppressed, and to uphold justice amongst folks, with out discrimination based mostly on their faith or their beliefs,” he wrote.