Pro-Palestine marches after Manchester attack ‘un-British’, says Mahmood
Next on Sky news, Mahmood is asked about the pro-Palestine marches that took place late on Thursday. She said:
I was very disappointed to see those protests go ahead last night.
I think that behaviour is fundamentally un-British. I think it’s dishonourable.
I would have wanted those individuals to just take a step back.
The issues that are driving those protests have been going on now for some time; they don’t look like they’re going to come to an end any day soon.
They could have stepped back and just given a community that has suffered deep loss just a day or two to process what has happened and to carry on with the grieving process.
Key events
This is an image of the Manchester synagogue attacker, Jihad al-Shamie, who was shot dead by armed police on Thursday morning.
It was taken from Facebook after being posted by his father, Faraj al-Shamie, on 23 October last year to welcome the birth of his grandson.
A pro-Palestine protest planned for Saturday in London should be cancelled following the terror attack in Manchester, the Metropolitan Police has insisted.
A statement from the Met published on social media site X on Friday morning said:
The horrific terrorist attack that took place in Manchester yesterday will have caused significant fear and concern in communities across the UK, including here in London.
Yet at a time when we want to be deploying every available officer to ensure the safety of those communities, we are instead having to plan for a gathering of more than 1,000 people in Trafalgar Square on Saturday in support of a terrorist organisation.
By choosing to encourage mass law-breaking on this scale, Defend Our Juries are drawing resources away from the communities of London at a time when they are needed most.
We urge them to do the responsible thing and delay or cancel their plans.
Neighbours of the synagogue killer said he had lived there since around 2021, and one neighbour remembered a baby also living at the address but could not recall seeing a woman living there.
One woman told PA Media:
We used to see him out in the garden working out, doing weights, press ups.
He used to change his clothes. One day he would be wearing the full gown, to the floor and the next jeans and pyjama bottoms.
Another neighbour described how armed police arrived at the house around 3.15pm on Thursday.
A man, who would only give his name as Mike, 35, said he was visiting his mother’s house and was at the window and looked up to see police arrived.
He said:
There was a whole load of armed police coming up the street, they were all in black, they were all in vans and a big marked police car blocked the street.
They went to the house and started screaming, ‘Armed police! Come out!’ They had a chain saw. They left after about an hour.
Mike said he did not see anyone taken away and did not personally know Al-Shamie.
Josh Halliday
Armed counter-terror officer swooped on the attacker’s semi-detached property shortly before 4.30pm yesterday, around seven hours after the attack at a synagogue about two miles away.
Footage shared by neighbours shows heavily armed officers in military fatigues preparing to raid the house with a chainsaw and a police dog. One officer carried two bulletproof shields.
“They just came up the street shouting and screaming,” said one neighbour, Mike, who only wanted to give his first name. “They shouted ‘Get down’ … they were there for ages.”
Another neighbour, Paul Wright, 60, said he feared an anti-Jewish attack was imminent given the raised tensions over the Gaza conflict.
“It doesn’t surprise me. I suppose if you think you’re mandated by God to do that it’s a great force multiplier,” he said.
Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, has said Thursday was a “horrific day” for the Jewish community in Britain, Britain at large, and the Jewish community throughout the world.
“It’s a shocking reminder of what we’ve been alerting on for quite some time, that this heatwave of antisemitism and anti-Jewish feelings all over the world at the end reaches bloodshed,” he told LBC.
The Israeli president visited the UK last month and held what he described as a “tough” set of exchanges over humanitarian aid in Gaza with Keir Starmer in Downing Street. There were street protests during his visit demanding that he be arrested as a war criminal.
This morning, Herzog said what happened at the synagogue in Crumpsall was a “true horror” and said “very strong steps” are required in pre-empting “this horrific wave of terror and antisemitism”.
Residents in Langley Crescent said Jihad al-Shamie had lived there since around 2021, and one neighbour remembered a baby also living at the address but could not recall seeing a woman living there.
Another neighbour described how armed police arrived at the house around 3.15pm on Thursday.
Press Association said the man, who would only give his name as Mike, 35, said he was visiting his mother’s house and was at the window and looked up to see police arrive. He said:
There was a whole load of armed police coming up the street, they were all in black, they were all in vans and a big marked police car blocked the street.
They went to the house and started screaming, ‘Armed police! Come out!’ They had a chainsaw. They left after about an hour.”
Mike said he did not see anyone taken away and did not personally know Al-Shamie.
Flags in the House of Commons have been lowered for the victims of the attack.
Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons Speaker, agreed for the flags to be lowered until 8pm on Friday.
Here are some of the latest images from Langley Crescent, the street where, according to PA Media, police believe the attacker lived.
Yesterday, police named the attacker as Jihad al-Shamie, 35, a British citizen of Syrian descent.
Asked about his name, on LBC, Mahmood says:
I was very surprised to discover that name myself. Actually, as a Muslim, I’ve never heard someone being called Jihad, but it is the name that he was born with – that has always been his name.
PA Media reports that a police officer is standing guard restricting entrance to Langley Crescent, where Al-Shamie is believed to have lived in the three-bed end-terrace council property.
Dozens of reporters are also camped in the street outside as more police arrive in a van at the property in Prestwich, a couple of miles from the synagogue in Crumpsall.
We’ve got a bit more from the chief rabbi, who said so many people in the Jewish community “and well beyond it” wonder why marches in support of Palestine Action are allowed to take place.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:
Some of them contain outright antisemitism, outright support for Hamas. Not every single person, however there is so much of this, which certainly is dangerous to many within our society.
You cannot separate the words on our streets, the actions of people in this way, and what inevitably results, which was yesterday’s terrorist attack.
The two are directly linked and therefore we call on the government yet again, we’ve been doing so continuously, and yet again we say get a grip on these demonstrations, they are dangerous.
Chief rabbi criticises ‘unrelenting wave of hatred against Jews’
Chief rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis said this is a “very dark time” ahead of visiting Manchester, as he referred to an “unrelenting wave of hatred against Jews”.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he said:
Right now, our hearts are shattered. What transpired yesterday was an awful blow to us, something which actually we were fearing might happen because of the build up to this action.
I’m going to be arriving in Manchester early this morning, together with my wife, in order to be with a grieving community, and this is a very dark time, not just for Jews of Britain but for all of our society because this wasn’t merely an attack against Jews, it was an attack against the values of our society.
The chief rabbi added:
We have witnessed an unrelenting wave of hatred against Jews being expressed on our streets, on campuses, right across social media and some of the media.
And in addition to that, when there is the unjustified demonisation of Israel, that feeds directly into an anti-Jewish sentiment within the tone of Britain, and that then encourages extremism.
Our government needs to be mindful of that.
As my colleague Chris Osuh has reported, feelings of safety in the UK’s Jewish community have declined sharply in the last couple of years, according to the largest survey of British Jews since 7 October 2023.
Speaking to LBC, the home secretary says antisemitism has been “rising” in the UK.
Asked about comments made by Israel foreign minister Gideon Sa’ar that the UK government is failing to curb “rampant antisemitic and anti-Israeli incitement in Britain”, she said:
Myself and the prime minister both acknowledge that antisemitism in our country has been rising.
It is completely unacceptable, and we both condemn it utterly. We will not stand for it.
We have strong laws in our country against incitement to racial hatred.
Too early to say if terrorist cell behind the attack, home secretary says
Mahmood’s next stop is BBC Breakfast. She is asked if a terrorist cell is behind the attack.
It’s too early to say that yet. Arrests have been made and the police investigation is continuing at pace.
We will, of course, provide more information as that comes in from the police, but I think it’s important we don’t get ahead of what we know as the basic facts of what has happened.
Pro-Palestine marches after Manchester attack ‘un-British’, says Mahmood
Next on Sky news, Mahmood is asked about the pro-Palestine marches that took place late on Thursday. She said:
I was very disappointed to see those protests go ahead last night.
I think that behaviour is fundamentally un-British. I think it’s dishonourable.
I would have wanted those individuals to just take a step back.
The issues that are driving those protests have been going on now for some time; they don’t look like they’re going to come to an end any day soon.
They could have stepped back and just given a community that has suffered deep loss just a day or two to process what has happened and to carry on with the grieving process.
Earlier on her morning media round, the home secretary said the attacker was not known to police. She’s faced a similar line of questioning on Sky News, where she was asked whether he had been referred to the anti-terror Prevent programme.
As you would expect considering he was not known to police, she says he had not.
Home secretary denies the recognition of Palestine has emboldened antisemites
Next up for the home secretary is Times Radio, on which she denied recognising Palestine had emboldened those who are antisemitic.
Mahmood said:
The only person responsible for this devastating attack on our Jewish community is the attacker himself.
The police have made three additional arrests, and it’s important that they are allowed to continue with their investigations and our process of justice is allowed to take its course. That is separate to what is happening in the Middle East.
The work of this government since the day we were elected has been to put our shoulder to the wheel in the diplomatic efforts in difficult and delicate conversations that are designed to try and bring an end to that devastating war.
Far too many lives have been lost. We want to see a secure and safe state of Israel alongside a state of Palestine.