Liverpool suicide bomber built ‘Mother of Satan’ explosive packed with ball bearings

The Liverpool suicide attacker built a ‘Mother of Satan’ ball bearing bomb used by ISIS 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, 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’.

Almeni spent most of his time in the UK in Liverpool, and spent eight months living with devout Christians Malcolm and Elizabeth Hitchcott at their home in Aigburth. They admit that he had mental health problems and had lost touch with him recently.

Mr Hitchcott, a former British Army soldier, said he felt ‘numbed’ to learn that the ‘lovely man’ who lived at his home for eight months was behind the plot. ‘It’s almost too impossible to believe,’ he told the Daily Mail. ‘There was nothing to suggest he could go on to become radicalised.’

The couple described their ‘shock’ that Almeni – a ‘very quiet fellow’ – would try to commit an act of terror, telling ITV News they lived ‘cheek by jowl’ when he stayed with them at their home and that there was ‘never any suggestion of anything amiss’.

A tearful Mrs Hitchcott told the broadcaster: ‘What a waste of a life. But the one thing I suppose to be thankful for is that he did not kill anyone else.’

Mr Hitchcott said Almeni rejected Islam and converted to Christianity and was baptised and confirmed in Liverpool Cathedral in March 2017.

‘He first came to the cathedral in August 2015 and wanted to convert to Christianity,’ Mr Hitchcott told MailOnline. ‘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.’

It is thought Almeni had wanted to attack the cathedral on Remembrance Sunday as 1,200 military personnel, veterans and families of the fallen gathered to observe the minute’s silence – but that traffic and road closures stopped him from getting there. It is believed he died after being locked in a cab by Mr Perry as it exploded into a fireball outside the hospital.

Detectives and MI5 spies are investigating whether the bombing was an Islamist-inspired attack. Security sources said Almeni’s mental health problems were ‘a key line of inquiry’ in understanding his motivation.

Police said Almeni was picked up in the Rutland Avenue area of the city. As the car reached the hospital’s passenger drop-off point, it exploded.

Four men arrested under terrorism laws in the Kensington area of Liverpool – three aged 21, 26 and 29, who were held on Sunday, and a man aged 20 who was detained on Monday – have now been released from police custody following interview, Counter Terrorism Police North West said on Monday night. MI5 is assisting police with the investigation.

Meanwhile, forensic officers continued the delicate task of searching the ‘bomb factory’ from where Almeni booked the taxi. Eight nearby homes have been evacuated, and officers on Monday carried out a controlled explosion on an item taken from the property in nearby Sefton Park in what they described as ‘a precaution’.

Detective Chief Inspector Andrew Meeks of Counter Terrorism Police North West said: ‘Our enquiries are very much ongoing but at this stage we strongly believe that the deceased is 32-year-old Emad Al Swealmeen.

‘Al Swealmeen is connected to both the Rutland Avenue and Sutcliffe Street addresses where searches are still ongoing. We believe he lived at the Sutcliffe Street address for some time and had recently rented the Rutland Avenue address. Our focus is the Rutland Avenue address where we have continued to recover significant items.

‘We continue to appeal for any information about this incident and now that we have released his name any information that the public may have about Al Swealmeen no matter how small may be of great assistance to us.’

The UK’s terror threat level was raised to ‘severe’ following an emergency COBRA meeting at Downing Street. Police and security services advised the Prime Minister that another attack on British soil is now ‘highly likely’. It came exactly a month after Conservative MP Sir David Amess was fatally stabbed during a constituency surgery in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex.

At a Covid press briefing yesterday, Boris Johnson dramatically urged the country to be ‘vigilant’ and called the blast a ‘stark reminder’ of the risks of terrorism.

Home Secretary Priti Patel cancelled a planned trip to Paris to discuss the Channel migrant crisis so she could be briefed on the Liverpool bombing.

Assistant Chief Constable Russ Jackson said on Monday night: ‘Following interviews with the arrested men, we are satisfied with the accounts they have provided and they have been released from police custody.

‘The investigation continues to move at a fast pace with investigative teams working throughout the night.

‘We have made significant progress since Sunday morning and have a much greater understanding of the component parts of the device, how they were obtained and how the parts are likely to have been assembled. We have also recovered important evidence from the address at Rutland Avenue which is becoming central to the investigation.

‘There is a considerable way to go to understand how this incident was planned, prepared for and how it happened. We are gaining a better understanding by the hour but it is likely to be some time, perhaps many weeks until we are confident on our understanding of what has taken place.’

The Home Office is said to have been suspicious about his claims that he was Syrian.

Mr Hitchcott exclusively told MailOnline: ‘He was Syrian through his father but I gather he spent much of his life in Iraq, where his mother came from.

‘As far as I can recall, we never spoke in any great length about the situation in Iraq and Syria, we may have touched on it once or twice but he gave nothing away about what he felt about it.

‘I don’t think he ever went back to Iraq or Syria. I know that he had a brother who lived in Dubai and often spent time between there and Iraq. Enzo used to send him money.

‘He was good company. We would sometimes go on days out, myself, Enzo and my wife Marion visited Speke Hall on one occasion and took some nice images together.

‘But his behaviour changed ever so slightly towards the end of the period he lived with us. He stated to ask odd questions. I remember he came into the kitchen once and said: ‘Is there anything you want to ask me?’

‘I was a bit taken aback and replied ”no, why do you ask? You’ve been here six months.” He then showed me a letter addressed to him that had been torn at the top of the envelope and he accused me of opening it to see what was inside.

‘But I hadn’t at all. The envelope was torn as as it had been pushed through the letter box. I showed him a letter addressed to me that had been torn in the same way but I don’t think he was completely convinced. Myself and my wife went on holiday in November 2017 and told Enzo he could stay at our house while we were away but he said he wanted to leave and get his own place.

‘He left and we had little contact with him from then on in. Apart from when he invited us to a Christmas carol concert in December 2017 at the Williamson Tunnels.’

He added: ‘My wife saw him before lockdown and he seemed to be in very good spirits. He said that he’d enrolled in a catering course specialising in cake decorating at a college in Liverpool. The fact that he’s blown himself up in a taxi in a terrorist attack has really shocked me. As far as I knew his only interest was go-karting and Formula 1.’

Source: Daily Mail