From the Telegraph
Police have been accused of “brushing aside” concerns about anti-Semitism at a mosque visited by the Manchester synagogue attacker.
Lancashire Constabulary has been criticised after saying it found “no evidence” of hate speech at Masjid Sunnah Nelson, near Burnley, where an imam was filmed describing Jews as “treacherous”.
It later emerged that Jihad Al-Shamie, the Manchester terrorist, visited the mosque years before his attack in Heaton Park on Yom Kippur in October, in which two people died.
The Telegraph revealed that Abul Abbaas Naveed, the imam of the mosque, made a series of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel comments in his sermons.
The mosque, which is associated with the fundamentalist Salafi movement, was reported to police by a third party. Police said they spoke to the imam but there was “no evidence” of a criminal offence. The force did not answer questions about whether it had reviewed evidence available online.
Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, said the force should have launched a full investigation after being alerted to the imam’s comments. “This is exactly the kind of hate speech our forces should be investigating. Brushing it off is a complete dereliction of duty from Lancashire police,”
The imam, speaking in October 2023, described Jews as “treacherous” in a sermon about a hadith, or Islamic holy text, that claimed a Jewish woman tried to kill the prophet Mohammed with poisoned meat. This also shows us the traits of the Yahud [Jews], how treacherous they are and how much they betray and oppress people, because they did this with the greatest of the humans,” he said.
Other sermons delivered at the mosque include one on Oct 1 this year, when the imam said: “Whoever has knowledge and does not act by his knowledge, then he has a resemblance to the Yahud [Jews].”
A spokesman for Lancashire Constabulary said: “We visited the mosque in question and spoke to the imam, who has no knowledge of the Manchester Synagogue offender ever attending their mosque.
“We have no other reports or witnesses to any form of sermon having taken place that would constitute a criminal offence. There is no evidence to support the third-party report we received online.
