Manchester court hears two Iranians mapped a synagogue for a bomb plot

Two Iranian men accused of preparing a bomb attack on Manchester's Jewish community appeared at Westminster magistrates' court on Saturday, and the prosecutor said they had identified a synagogue that was already the site of a fatal attack.

Rahman Salehi, 34, from Salford, and Salam Ahmadyan, 36, from Liverpool, were charged on Friday with preparing to commit an act of terrorism or with assisting another person to do so. The court heard that the alleged target included the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation. Two worshippers were killed in an attack at a Manchester synagogue almost a year before these arrests. The men have not been convicted. What follows is the prosecution case as put to the magistrates.

Prosecutor Mark Luckett said the pair were in contact with a third person, believed to be an Iranian national operating from inside Iran. That person, he said, directed and coordinated the planned attack and sent instructions on how to assemble a homemade explosive. The men are accused of acquiring a document titled Steps for Making a Powder Chlorine and Car Brake Oil/Fluid Bomb, and of holding video material on how to manufacture or assemble an improvised device. Luckett said they used the internet to identify and research potential targets, and that the work amounted to hostile reconnaissance inside Manchester's Jewish community.

Police arrested both men on 20 September 2026, in daylight, just before Yom Kippur. The timing is part of the prosecution narrative. The festival is the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, and synagogues are full. The arrests came almost a year after the earlier Manchester synagogue attack. Counter-terror officers have not said in open court whether the date was chosen by the suspects or was the day the surveillance case was ready.

The immigration history was read out. Salehi arrived in Britain illegally by small boat in 2020, lived in Germany for five years before that, and was granted leave to remain in 2023, with permission running to July 2028. Ahmadyan arrived by small boat in 2023 and has an outstanding asylum claim. Both will be remanded in custody. The next hearing is on 23 October.

The allegation of direction from Iran is the part with consequences beyond Manchester. Luckett did not name the third person. He did not say the contact was an officer of the Iranian state. He said the contact was believed to be inside Iran and had sent assembly instructions. If that claim is proved, the case sits with other British files in which prosecutors have described reconnaissance against Jewish and Israeli targets by people in contact with handlers abroad. If it is not proved, the court is left with two men, a document about chlorine and brake fluid, and a synagogue they are accused of having studied.

Chlorine powder and brake fluid are a known improvised mix in open-source bomb manuals. They are also ordinary retail goods. The prosecution will have to show that the document and the videos were collected for an attack, not as curiosity, and that the synagogue visits were reconnaissance rather than attendance. The charge of preparation under British terror law does not require a finished device. It does require evidence of steps toward an attack. The magistrates were not asked to test that evidence on Saturday. They were asked to remand the men.

Heaton Park congregation members already live with the earlier attack. A second case, built on alleged mapping of the same community, will keep police at the door through the High Holy Days season and into the October hearing. The open question for the security services is the unnamed third person. Until he is identified in a charge, the Manchester file stops at two defendants in custody and a set of instructions the prosecutor says came from Iran.