Liverpool bomber named as 32-year-old Emad Al Swealmeen

I think we can definitely rule out the IRA and white supremists now. From the Telegraph

Police named the attacker as 32-year-old Emad Al Swealmeen, who they believed had lived at Sutcliffe Street address for some time but had recently rented a Rutland Avenue address.

Al Swealmeen, who died when his Improvised Explosive Device (IED) went off, had ordered a taxi to take him to Liverpool Women’s Hospital but well-placed sources stressed his motivation remained unclear as was his intended target. He has associates; may they sing like canaries. 

One possible theory is Al Swealmeen was intending to walk towards Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral to detonate the device as the congregation left following a Remembrance Day service.

According to the Daily Mail he was a Syrian asylum seeker with an Iraqi mother who took the name Enzo Almeni to sound more European and assist his asylum application, at the time that he was received into the Anglican church in a ceremony at the Anglican cathedral that may have been his bomb target. 

Enzo Almeni, 32, is thought to have suffered from mental health problems and was sectioned in around 2014 after being caught for brandishing a knife in central Liverpool, according to friends.

He arrived in the UK several years ago, and mostly lived in Liverpool, where he was being supported by Christian volunteers from a network of churches who help asylum seekers, it is understood.

Almeni’s birth name is Emad Jamil Al-Swealmeen and is believed to have spent a large part of his life in Iraq, where his mother came from. The motor racing enthusiast changed his first name to Enzo in honour of the Ferrari founder Enzo Ferrari and to sound less Muslim and appear more Western, in the hope that it would help his asylum application. He was sectioned in around 2014 after being caught for brandishing a knife in central Liverpool, according to friends.

In 2017, Almeni spent eight months living with devoted Christians Malcolm and Elizabeth Hitchott at their home in the Aigburth district of the city.

Mr Hitchott, a former solider in the British Army, told MailOnline that he met Almeni in 2015 through his work at Liverpool Cathedral when he started expressing an interest in converting to Christianity. He undertook an Alpha course.

He said: ‘He first came to the cathedral in August 2015 and wanted to convert to Christianity. He took an Alpha course, which explains the Christian faith, and completed it in November of that year. That enabled him to come to an informed decision and he changed from Islam to Christianity and was confirmed as a Christian by at least March 2017, just before he came to live with us. He was destitute at that time and we took him in.’  I think his associates arrested today definitely need to start spilling what they know. I bet they told him that martyrdom was the only way to gain Allah’s forgivness for becoming a Christian. Why else would he be in the taxi and not them?