Two men have been jailed for life after attempting to stage one of the UK\u2019s deadliest terrorist attacks before it was thwarted by an undercover operative.<\/p>\n
Walid Saadaoui, 38, and Amar Hussein, 52, who had sworn allegiance to Islamic State<\/a> (IS), planned a marauding firearms attack targeting Greater Manchester\u2019s Jewish community.<\/p>\n On Friday, the pair were sentenced at Preston crown court after being found guilty of preparing acts of terrorism between December 2023 and May 2024.<\/p>\n The prime mover in the plot, Tunisian-born Saadaoui, of Abram, Wigan, was ordered to serve a minimum of 37 years.<\/p>\n Hussein, of no fixed address, was ordered to serve at least 26 years.<\/p>\n Saadaoui\u2019s younger brother, Bilel Saadaoui, 37, of Hindley, Wigan, was sentenced to six years in prison for failing to disclose information about the plan.<\/p>\n All three had denied the offences in a trial lasting almost three months last year, in which jurors were told they were Islamist extremists with a \u201cvisceral dislike\u201d of Jewish people.<\/p>\n Walid Saadaoui, a former Italian restaurant owner and hotel entertainer, arranged for the purchase and delivery of semi-automatic rifles, conducted reconnaissance and identified targets, but the man supplying them with the weapons was an undercover operative.<\/p>\n The operative, known to them as Farouk, had infiltrated jihadist social media networks and convinced Saadaoui that he was a fellow extremist.<\/p>\n Saadaoui was arrested in a counter-terror strike involving more than 200 officers as he attempted to take possession of two assault rifles, a semi-automatic pistol and almost 200 rounds of ammunition in the car park of the Last Drop hotel in Bolton on 8 May 2024. The weapons had been deactivated.<\/p>\n Bilel Saadaoui was sentenced to six years in prison for failing to disclose information about his brother\u2019s plan. Photograph: Greater Manchester police\/PA<\/p>\n The court heard that Saadaoui hero-worshipped the IS terrorist Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who orchestrated the 2015 Paris terror attacks in which 130 people were killed and hundreds more injured in gun attacks.<\/p>\n