A friend of the Manchester synagogue attacker has been jailed for life with a minimum of 17 years after the pair planned a separate attack on a military base.

Mohammad Bashir, 31, drove Jihad Al-Shamie on a 10-hour round trip to conduct hostile reconnaissance at the UK’s Defence Academy in Shrivenham, Oxfordshire, on 14 August 2025.

Weeks after that journey, Al-Shamie, 35, was shot dead by police after carrying out the Heaton Park Synagogue attack, in which two Jewish men were killed.

Bashir was sentenced at Manchester Crown Court after pleading guilty to one count of preparing an act of terrorism.

Counter terror police uncovered Bashir’s friendship with Al-Shamie after reviewing his phones following the attack on the synagogue in October 2025.

The pair held extremist views and had discussed preparing for “war” and frequently made antisemitic remarks in WhatsApp conversations, Greater Manchester Police (GMP) said.

Bashir drove Al-Shamie to Shrivenham while Al-Shamie made notes about security arrangements at the base on his phone under the title “espionage”.

They stopped at the site, which trains personnel from the British military and Civil Service as well as foreign students, for just 13 minutes and returned home the same day.

Both disposed of their phones after the trip, but officers accessed cloud data linked to their devices, and discovered Al-Shamie had searches using the terms ‘weapons, potential target sites, and individuals with links to the Israeli military’, GMP said.

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