Couple who met on Muslim dating site plotted ‘Mother of Satan’ bombing at Xmas
A coupLe who met on a Muslim dating site were facing jail yesterday for plotting a ‘Mother of Satan’ bomb attack at christmas.
Rowaida el-Hassan, 33, and Munir Mohammed, 36, were sharing beheading videos within weeks of getting together.
After the pair were convicted of terrorism offences at the old Bailey, it emerged that:
Mohammed used Facebook to get in contact with an Islamic State commander;
The Sudanese refugee learnt how to make a bomb from the same YouTube video used by the Manchester Arena attacker;
When he was caught he tried to blame the social media sites for making it too easy to plan an attack;
police fear he was plotting to put ricin in ready meals at a food processing factory that supplied Tesco and Morrisons;
Mohammed obtained a soldier’s pass to an army base because it was left in a car.
The couple’s romance began in January 2016 after el-Hassan – a former Boots pharmacist – posted a profile on singlemuslim. com. Mohammed, who needed someone to help him make a bomb, told the newly divorced mother of two he was a geophysicist in the oil industry. He introduced her to beheading videos and they progressed to YouTube manuals on bombmaking. one featured an IS fighter discussing bomb ingredients as if on a cookery show. The video inspired the Manchester bombing by Salman Abedi that killed 22 last year.
el-Hassan, who has a master’s degree from university college London, discovered the truth about her new boyfriend when he revealed he had two wives and needed help to bring the second to the uK. He confessed he was looking for a third wife having dumped the first at a refugee camp in Greece after she miscarried their child. He married a second wife in Sudan online.
el-Hassan also learnt he was using a false identity to work at a food factory in Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire, having worked illegally at car washes and selling second-hand cars since reaching Britain in a lorry four years ago.
The pharmacist, who came from a middle- class family in northwest London, was besotted with Mohammed. Lonely after her husband cheated on her, she said on the dating site she was looking for ‘a simple, very simple, honest and straight forward man who fears
‘Poisoning ready meals with ricin’
Allah’. She provided Mohammed with information about bombmaking and helped him research making ricin from castor seeds.
Detectives believe Mohammed, from Derby, may have considered poisoning products at the Kerry Foods ready meals factory where he was a ‘sauce cooker’. But he moved on to TATp (triacetone triperoxide) explosives, commonly known as Mother of Satan, under the online tutelage of IS commander Abubakr Kurdi who called for ‘lone wolf attacks’.
Before his arrest, Mohammed had downloaded an image of a man merging with a wolf to signify readiness for an attack.
He had gathered two of the three components for TATp explosives, but he mistook acetone-free nail polish for acetone due to his poor english. Detectives found the army base pass Mohammed had obtained from a soldier who left it in a car he bought second-hand. Detective chief Inspector paul Greenwood said: ‘There was a high risk he could have launched an attack by christmas. It was perhaps the complexity of the english language where he made his mistake. He had access to food, working for a business that supplied supermarkets with ready meals.’
Judge Michael Topolski warned the couple, who were described as ‘ideological soulmates’, of long jail terms when sentenced on February 22 for preparing terrorist acts.
A spokesman for Kerry Foods in Burton said there was no evidence Mohammed had attempted to contaminate any of its products.
It emerged during his trial that Margaret Beckett, former deputy leader of the Labour party, tried to help him with his asylum case. He had a Home office interview set for December 20, 2016, but was arrested eight days earlier.