Make New York Post a Preferred Source Two Iranian nationals were charged on Friday with plotting a terror attack targeting Jewish people in the UK on Yom Kippur.
Salam Ahmadyan, 36, and Rahman Salehi, 34, allegedly planned to launch an attack in the city of Manchester on the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, according to a statement from British counterterrorism police.
They are accused of acquiring homemade explosive materials using encrypted messaging apps, as well as a document called “Steps for Making [a] Powder Chlorine and Car Brake Oil/Fluid Bomb,” according to police.
Both also allegedly obtained images, plans, and maps of potential targets, and conducted reconnaissance operations at the possible locations, authorities said.
The pair’s alleged plot coincided with the anniversary of last year’s Islamist terror attacks at a Manchester synagogue, which left two worshippers dead.
Ahmadyan, who was based in Liverpool, and Salehi, who was living in Salford, near Manchester, were allegedly in contact with a third party, possibly in Iran, in relation to the plot, according to authorities.
Both men are believed to have entered Britain illegally in the last few years via migrant-smuggling small boats, according to the British government.
They were arrested on Sept. 20, the day before Yom Kippur, by counter-terrorism police in Manchester.
“This news will be deeply distressing for our Jewish communities, coming so soon after Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur,” British government minister Shabana Mahmood said on Friday.
“I know this will be especially true in Manchester, as we mark one year since the terrorist attack at Heaton Park Synagogue,” she added.
The news of the foiling of an alleged Iranian-backed terror plot in Britain comes just hours after cops arrested another Iranian national in London on suspicion of planning a separate attack at a British air force base last weekend.
The 25-year-old unidentified man was arrested on Thursday in connection with an alleged plot targeting RAF Fairford, some 90 miles southwest of London, which is used by the US Air Force for missions to Iran, according to British counterterrorism police.
Five British nationals were arrested after suspected explosives were found in three vans near the base early Sunday morning, although all of the suspects were subsequently released on bail.
The explosives were later found to be gasoline, and the incident remains under investigation as a possible Iranian-backed plot.
While the two incidents are so far being treated as unrelated, the two events have “brought into sharp focus some of the wider threats being projected into the UK from Iran,” Britain’s Senior National Coordinator for Counter Terrorism Policing, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Vicki Evans, said in a statement on Friday.
Iran has strongly denied any involvement in last Sunday’s foiled plot, with its embassy in London issuing a fierce statement rebuking the claims that its proxies planned to attack US forces in Britain.
So far, it has not issued any response to reports that two Iranian nationals planned to attack Jews in Manchester.
