The Liverpool suicide attacker built a ‘Mother of Satan’ ball bearing bomb used by extremists to ’cause maximum carnage’ and may have been driven to take revenge after his asylum bids kept being turned down amid confusion about where he was actually from, it was claimed today.
Enzo Almeni, 32, a Muslim who converted to Christianity four years ago, was killed after the homemade device exploded as his taxi pulled up at Liverpool Women’s Hospital just before before the 11am minute’s silence on Remembrance Sunday.
The asylum seeker’s heritage is disputed, having arrived in Britain claiming to be of Syrian and Iraqi heritage, JUDI SLOT ONLINE JACKPOT TERBESAR but security sources believe he actually came from Jordan. It raises serious questions for the Home Office, as he was allowed to stay in the country for at least seven years without being deported.
It is not yet known when he arrived in the UK but he first became known to the authorities after being arrested for possession of a ‘large knife’ after the rejection of his asylum claim in 2014, resulting in him being sectioned under the Mental Health Act and hospitalised for several months.
Ever since then it is clamed he had been in a long-term dispute with the Home Office over his application for UK residential status, and until recently had been living at a hostel for asylum seekers – run by private contracting giant Serco – in Sutcliffe Street, Liverpool, ‘for some time’ before renting a flat two miles away in Rutland Avenue, which he turned into a bomb factory.
A security source told The Sun: ‘One of the issues being looked at is whether this unresolved grievance pushed him over the edge and prompted him to carry out the attack.’
His driver David Perry, 45, survived in a ‘miracle’ after Almeni’s 1lb bomb failed to properly detonate, with the hero cabbie said to have panicked when his passenger started ‘vibrating’ and ‘flashing’ in the seconds before they reached their destination.
Police and MI5 are trying to work out if Liverpool’s main maternity hospital, which was packed with mothers and new babies, was his intended target.ISIS attacked the maternity ward of Dasht-e-Barchi hospital in Kabul, killing 24 including 16 mothers and two children in 2020.
A senior former intelligence source told the Mirror: ‘The bomber intended to enter the hospital and trigger his device, but for some reason it went off early and failed properly to initiate.Had he successfully set off the bomb inside it would have been extremely bloody and horrific. We believe this was a partial explosion, clearly from a device at high-chest level, aimed at causing many casualties.’
Police are also looking at whether Almeni may planned to have blown himself up on Remembrance Sunday as 1,200 military personnel, veterans and families of the fallen gathered to observe the minute’s silence at Liverpool Cathedral, where he was baptised and confirmed in March 2017.
His bomb was made using homemade TATP explosives. TATP is unstable and known as a ‘Mother of Satan’ because it is liable to blow up accidentally.It was used by Islamist terrorists in the Paris suicide attacks of 2015, the Manchester Arena bombing in 2017 and the failed Parsons Green Underground station attack.
Just like Almeni, Parsons Green bomber Ahmed Hassan had been taken in by a family before turning to terrorism.
The Christian couple who opened their home to the Liverpool suicide bomber for eight months after he converted from Islam told of their shock last night after learning he launched a suicide bomb attack and declared: ‘We just loved him.He was a lovely guy’.
Here’s what we know about the terror attack, and the suicide bomber, so far:
- Enzo Almeni, 32, a Muslim who converted to Christianity four years ago, repeatedly turned down for permanent residency because the authorities weren’t convinced by his claims he came from Syria;
- He arrived in the UK before 2014 and was arrested and sectioned after being caught carrying a ‘large knife’ around Liverpool;
- After living with a family on Merseyside and converting from Islam to Christianity, he moved into a hostel for asylum seekers where he lived for the past three years.
Recently he rented a flat, which he turned into a bomb factory;
- He booked a taxi to take him to the Liverpool Women’s Hospital at around 10.45am. His bomb, made from unstable TATP used by ISIS, explodes as he pulls up at 10.57am on Sunday;
- Police and MI5 are trying to find his motive – but sources believe it was his dispute after claiming asylum that may have motivated him;
- Footage of the blast shows the driver, David Perry, jump out after the blast having apparently locked the doors to prevent him getting into the hospital.
His wife says it is a miracle he survived;
- Three men aged 21, 26 and 27, are arrested with two properties around a mile from the scene being searched by police: Sutcliffe Street in Kensington; Yesterday a fourth suspect, 20, was arrested in Kensington, also under the Terrorism Act; All four men were later released without charge;
Emad Jamil Al Swealmeen, 32, (left) was killed after a homemade ball-bearing device exploded inside a taxi he rode to Liverpool Women’s Hospital on Remembrance Sunday just seconds before the 11am minute’s silence.He changed his name to Enzo Almeni and was taken in by a British Christian couple left heartbroken by his attack (pictured right with Malcolm Hitchcott)
This is the moment the taxi carrying the suicide bomber exploded outside a Liverpool hospital in what police and MI5 are now probing as a Poppy Day terror attack.Experts fear he was copying an ISIS attack on a maternity hospital in Kabul