A friend of the Manchester synagogue attacker, Mohammad Bashir, has been jailed for life with a minimum of 17 years for planning a separate attack on a UK military base. The 31-year-old was sentenced at Manchester Crown Court after pleading guilty to one count of preparing an act of terrorism.
The plot was uncovered by counter-terror police after reviewing Bashir's phones following the attack on the synagogue in October 2025. It emerged that Bashir and the synagogue attacker, Jihad Al-Shamie, 35, had been friends and held extremist views. They frequently made antisemitic remarks in WhatsApp conversations and discussed preparing for 'war'.
Bashir drove Al-Shamie to the Defence Academy in Shrivenham, Oxfordshire, on a 10-hour round trip in August 2025. The pair stopped at the site for just 13 minutes, during which Al-Shamie made notes about security arrangements on his phone under the title 'espionage'. They returned home the same day and disposed of their phones, but officers accessed cloud data linked to their devices and discovered evidence of their plans.
CCTV footage of the pair discussing their plans was also found by police. The investigation revealed that Al-Shamie had searched for terms such as 'weapons, potential target sites, and individuals with links to the Israeli military' on his phone. Bashir's sentencing comes as a significant blow to those who promote extremist ideologies.